By Scott Gilfoid: In a refreshing bit of a honesty, Kell Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) revealed today that he’s scared of his coming fight against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) this Saturday night on HBO World Championship Boxing and on Sky Sports Box Office pay-per-view.
After admitting that he’s feeling fear ahead of his match against Golovkin, Brook then rationalized that fear is a good thing for him because it will make him fight better this Saturday night in his match with Golovkin at the O2 Arena in London, England. In other words, Brook sees fear as a good thing that will work for him rather than against him in this fight.
Brook then came out of left field with him saying that he’s only been fighting at 60-70 percent his entire career due to him melting down to the welterweight division to fight at 147. That sounds like a bit much to me. It’s more like wishful thinking on Brook’s part. However, we have no way of really knowing whether that’s true or not, because Brook never moved up in weight until now.
Brook can theorize all he wants about what he could have or should have done, but there’s no way of getting into a time capsule and testing his wild theories. All we can do I listen to him drone about what he could have or should have done had he lived a different reality. It’s all so sad when you get a fighter blabbering about how they would have been a different fighter if this or that had happened. If Brook had fought at his right weight all along, he would have likely been knocked out by Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Miguel Cotto, the Charlo brothers, Julian Williams, Liam Smith and Demetrius Andrade. Depending on the sequence of those fights, I think Brook would have made some good money by now. I just don’t think he would be unbeaten.
“There is fear in me over this fight but that’s going to make me so sharp on the night. Having that fear is healthy. It’s good for me to be sharp and switched on throughout the fight,” said Brook via skysports.com.
So there it is. Brook is admitting that he’s afraid of Golovkin. I’m not surprised. I saw fear in Brook’s eyes a long time ago when he would talk about Golovkin and especially when he was on the same stage as him when facing off. The fear was unmistakable on Brook’s part.
When I heard Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn say today that Brook is so calm and so confident, I realized then it was a bunch of baloney. I think Brook is scared. Well, I know he’s scared, because he’s now admitted it. Brook’s fear is academic, and I don’t think it’s healthy fear. I’m predicting it’s going to be the unhealthy fear that leads him to make the wrong decisions in the ring on Saturday night.
“The talking is over. The training is over. It’s coming down to two champions, two top fighters fighting each other on Saturday night and I can’t wait to shock the world,” said Brook.
Brook is still bleating about how he’s going to “shock the world” on Saturday night when he gets inside the ring with Golovkin at the O2 Arena in London, England. While I do believe it’s possible in the physical sense for Brook to defeat Golovkin if the right circumstances play out in this match, I don’t think it’s going to happen.
Golovkin is fighting at too high of a level right now, he’s too powerful, and he’s too experienced. Golovkin has the pedigree, the power and the talent to make this a very, very easy fight. Brook is basically going into the Golovkin fight with a record of 1-0 in terms of high quality opposition. You can’t count the other 35 fights on Brook’s resume as being useful fights that will help him against a talent like Golovkin, because he’s faced too many fodder opponents in my view. Other than Brook’s fight against Shawn Porter in 2014, the rest of the guys that he’s fought were lower quality fighters in my opinion like Matthew Hatton, Kevin Bizier, Jo Jo Dan, Frankie Gavin, Vyacheslav Senchenko, Alvaro Robles, and Carson Jones.
You might want to argue that those are level-A fighters, but I think you’d be wrong. Those are not level-A welterweight contenders and they probably never will be. The thing is, Brook’s resume is littered with those types of fighters from top to bottom rather than the true top talents. What this means is that Brook is going into the Golovkin fight on Saturday night with just the Shawn Porter fight as his only Level-A opponent during his career.
I hate to keep repeating myself, but I think I have to when I say that Brook clinched his way to a win over Porter rather than fighting him. If the gold standard for fighting in exciting manner is Golovkin, then Brook’s style of fighting against Porter was little more than fool’s gold. In other words, an iron pyrite that resembles gold but it is not. It was a dreadful performance from Brook in stalling out the Porter fight by holding him all night long.
“I’ve probably been 60%-70% in my career and we’re going to see 100% on Saturday,” said Brook about how he was at less than 100% when fighting at welterweight due him struggling to make the weight. “I’m passionate about doing something no British fighters have done. I believe it will be the biggest win ever.”
I don’t know how Brook can sit there and say he would have been a better fighter if he had been fighting at his correct weight for his entire career rather than him draining down to fight at 147. We cannot know what Brook’s career would have been like. I have a feeling that Brook’s career would be nowhere if he was fighting 154 or 160 all these years since he turned pro. Can you imagine Brook fighting the Charlo brothers, Liam Smith, Julian Williams, Demetrius Andrade, Erislandy Lara, Daniel Jacobs, Chris Eubank Jr., Golovkin and Billy Joe Saunders?
Could Brook beat some of them? I think possibly he could beat some of them. But I also think there’s a chance Brook would lose to all of them. Those aren’t easy outs. Even if Brook lost to half of them, his career wouldn’t be what it is today with him sporting an inflated resume of 36-0, 25 knockouts. That record wouldn’t look like that if Brook was fighting at 154 or 160. Brook might have a record of something like 25-10 or something like that. I’m serious. I think Brook’s resume would be that of a high level journeyman if he fought at the correct weight for his body. I think the only reason that Brook has been successful during his career, besides the soft match-making that’s been done for him by his promoters, is the fact that he’s been boiling down to fight against lighter fighters than himself.
“I think I’ve got the skills. Everyone is going on that I’m a small guy coming up but that’s not the case,” said Brook. “Coming into this fight, I’m healthy and strong. I believe it’s written and I really do believe this is my time.”
Brook has good skills, but they’re not out of this world type skill like you see with a talent like Floyd Mayweather Jr. Brook is just good basic fighter with nice power for the welterweight division, but not the type of power that carries up to 154 and 160. We saw in Brook’s sparring session with WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith that his power didn’t carry up to the 154lb division, as Smith was by far the bigger puncher of the two. It wasn’t even close. Smith was a MUCH bigger puncher than Brook. That tells me that Brooks’ power doesn’t care to 154 and definitely not to 160.
When Brook would then rehydrate up to whatever weight that he would come into for his fights, he was able to have a size advantage over his opponents. Think of it. If you’ve got a true middleweight melting down to welterweight to fight smaller guys than himself, then he’s going to be a monster in the ring each time he rehydrates. As such, you’re not going to find too many welterweights that are going to be able to deal with the size of someone like Brook.
There are no longer same day weigh-ins, which used to prevent bigger fighters from melting down to fight smaller guys. You couldn’t do it before, because you have to make weight the day of your fight. I personally think that boxing was a safer sport when they had same day weigh-ins. It prevented to some extent fighters from gaming the system by melting down to fight guys that are much lighter than themselves in weight classes that weren’t designed for their body types. It’s bad news when a fighter gets inside the ring with someone that out-weighs by a considerable margin. I just don’t think Kell Brook would have been a better fighter if he had fought in the weight classes designed for his body at 154 or 160.
I don’t see Brook as having enough punching power to beat the best junior middleweights and middleweights. I think Brook would accumulated a lot of losses if he had to fight guys his own size, and he’d be journeyman level fighter or someone close to that. If you took someone like Daniel Jacobs and melted him down to 147 to fight against welterweights, he would be nightmare for anybody. It would be the same with the Charlo brothers. They didn’t have to do that because they were willing to fight in the correct weight classes for their body types.
I think it’s going to go badly for Brook on Saturday night against Golovkin.
It’s up to Brook how he wants to take this fight. He can go out as a hero by slugging with Golovkin or he can take a different approach by spoiling in using holding and running. It’s up to Brook how he wants to go out. I think it’s bad news when a fighter chooses to spoil in a fight that he loses in, because the fans don’t really respect that style of fighting. If you’re going to lose the match anyway, I think it’s always better to fight as hard as you can by focusing on looking good and being brave. I think Brook should slug with Golovkin and go down with the ship like a good captain.