By Patrick McHugh: Welterweight Kell Brook will undergo eye surgery this Monday to have his broken eye socket repaired following his 5th round TKO loss to IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin last Saturday night in their fight at the O2 Arena in London, England. Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn has already confirmed the injury and the surgery. The surgery will reportedly be conducted in Sheffield.
“Thanks for the messages, Special K Brook now left hospital – confirmed broken eye socket op on Monday in Sheffield,” said Hearn via his social media account.
What is not known is whether Brook will be able to come back from the broken eye socket. It’s a serious and potentially career ending injury. We’ll have to see whether Brook’s eye can be repaired so that he can continue fighting if that’s what he wishes to do. Former welterweight champion Antonio Margarito came back from a fractured orbital bone to resume his career, but he was out of the ring for an entire year and he needed three separate surgeries to repair the problem. If Brook’s injury isn’t as bad, then perhaps he’ll be able to return to the ring sooner. I wouldn’t imagine that we’ll be seeing him anytime soon though; not with him having to come back from eye surgery. That’s going to likely be a lengthy process before he can come back.
“They [the doctors] have said I have to have an operation, but I need to wait until the swelling goes down,” said Brook to skysports.com. “I have broken the eye socket, but they are saying I will make a full recovery.”
Brook says he’ll make a “full recovery,” but obviously we won’t know whether he will or not until later. It’s going to take time to see whether Brook is able to come back from this injury or not. What we don’t want is for Brook to be coming back and risking another eye injury to the same eye. We also don’t want Brook to come back and be seeing double of or, as he says, seeing five of his opponents out of the eye. Brook said that he could see five Golovkin’s out of his injured eye last Saturday night. It would be a sad end to Brook’s 12-year pro career if he can’t come back from the eye injury.
Brook and Amir Khan both seem to have learned painful lessons in moving up to middleweight to face bigger punchers in Golovkin and Saul Canelo Alvarez. While Brook suffered a broken eye socket that has his boxing career in jeopardy, Khan was knocked unconscious by Canelo in the 6th round last May. Khan hasn’t fought since the loss, and it’s unknown if he’ll be able to come back from the knockout to be the same fighter he once was.
If Khan is no longer able to take a hard punch without getting hurt, then the fans are rightly or wrongly going to assume that his punch resistance was eroded from his KO loss to Canelo. It’s bad news potentially for Khan when he does try and come back from the Canelo fight. Some would say that Brook and Khan’s losses to much bigger and stronger punchers from the middleweight division is a lesson that shows that it’s not a good idea for welterweights to move up two divisions to fight powerful middleweights.
If Brook and Khan are unable to come back from their defeats, then it might cause other welterweights to be hesitant in moving up in weight to challenge guys like Golovkin and Canelo. The money is so good obviously to come up in weight, but the risk is so high that it might be worth it for the smaller fighters to do this in the long run.
Thanks for the Tweets. I’m out of the hospital. Need op net week, but will be fine and I’ll be back. Sorry, I couldn’t bring it back home tonight,” said Brook on his Twitter.
Brook’s injury appeared to occur in the 1st round when Golovkin hit him with a scorching left hook to the head. Golovkin got everything on the shot, and it stunned Brook, causing him to lose his balance and almost go down. In contrast to the arm punches that Golovkin was throwing in the other rounds, he put everything he had in the left hand that he hit Brook with.
It’s not surprising that Brook suffered an injury from that shot, because it was a devastating blow. Brook was later able to make Golovkin miss enough with his big power shots to force him to decrease the power in his shots. Golovkin was focusing on just making contact with his shots and not putting everything he had in them. However, once Golovkin got into the 4th round, he started to unload once again with full force on his punches, and he had Brook retreating from that point on. It was no longer a fight once it got to the 4th round.
Sky pundit Paulie Malignaggi commented that he thought that Brook had possibly done enough to win the 4th round, but he must have been watching a different fight. Golovkin was chasing Brook around the ring and hitting him hard. All the hard shots landed in the 4th were from Golovkin. Brook was just throwing defensive shots and trying to get away from Golovkin. From Brook’s body language in the 4th, he looked like he was in the shutdown mode and no longer even trying to win. He looked like he was merely trying to survive, and you can’t do that against Golokvin. The fight was over from that point on. It was just a matter of time before Golovkin ended it.
The loss for Brook finished his hopes of beating the best middleweight in the division and taking his IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight straps from him.
Brook is now hoping to move down to the 154lb division to challenge fighters like Saul Canelo Alvarez and Liam Smith. Brook figures that he can dominate the junior middleweight division.
“I think I’ll be unstoppable at that weight and I am looking at the Canelo and Smith fight next week, I would love the winner,” said Brook.