By Scott Gilfoid: Kell Brook will be eagerly awaiting the outcome of this Saturday’s fight between WBO junior middleweight champion Liam “Beefy” Smith (23-0-1, 13 KOs) and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (47-1-1-33 KOs) for their fight on HBO pay-per-view. Brook, 30, wants to fight the winner of the contest once his broken right eye socket is healed and he’s given the all clear from the doctors for him to return to the boxing ring to resume his career.
Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn says that HBO is interested in a Canelo vs. Brook fight. It’s hard to know why though, because Brook just lost his last fight against unbeaten IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) last Saturday night at the O2 Arena in London, England.
By hanging tough against Golovkin for five rounds, Brook has raised his stock in the minds of some. It’s one of those things that happens with fighters when they face someone above their class in the sport. Unfortunately for Brook, I think his stock is only going to be raised for a very, very short time. Once Brook get thrown into the ring with Liam Smith or Canelo, he’s going to get blasted out again in a fight that ends in either a clinical knockout or another injury. Whether Brook’s stock can remain high in yet another loss is anyone’s guess.
Personally, I don’t rate fighters that lose over and over again just because they were briefly competitive. Heck, you could find a dozen fighters from the 154lb division that would have been briefly competitive against Golovkin last Saturday night the same way that Brook was. However, they still would have lost the fight.
I think Brook’s 15 minutes of fame from the Golovkin fight will soon be extinguished once he fights the winner – or even the loser – of the Canelo-Smith fight and winds up getting stopped. I think Liam Smith would have done a better job on Brook last Saturday night than Golovkin, because he would have been more disciplined and focused on taking him apart with body shots. What I like about Smith is his focus. The guy makes up his mind that he’s going to take a fighter apart with body shots and that’s exactly what he does. There’s no defense against the kind of body shots that Smith throws other than running from him, which doesn’t work. Smith would have been a nightmare for Brook last Saturday.
Golovkin made the mistake of taking the wrong approach to the Brook fight by aiming most of his shots to the head. That was the hardest target to hit. Once Golovkin got smart and started throwing body shots in the 5th, Brook’s hands dropped and he stopped protecting his head. That’s when Golovkin was able to tee off on him with head shots to get the knockout. I don’t believe that the fight was stopped because of Brook’s banged up eye. I think it was stopped because he was hurt by a body shot that Golovkin hit Brook with in the 5th. I’ve seen the round in slow motion a dozen times, and the fight changed completely after Golovkin hit Brook with a straight right to the body. Brook doubled over as if he were shot, and immediately dropped his gloves and was defenseless for the next 12 punches that came from Golovkin. It was the body shot that ended the fight, not Brook’s broken eye socket or the towel that was thrown in to save him by his trainer Dominic Ingle.
If Golovkin had the sense enough to know early on that he needed to throw nothing but body shots, he would have ended the fight in the first couple of rounds. I think Liam Smith and Canelo are too smart to waste time trying to hit Brook with head shots. They’ll do what Golovkin did in the 5th by aiming their punches to the body of Brook, where they won’t miss and they’ll chop him down QUICKLY.
I guess the idea is that by Canelo fighting a common opponent in Brook, it will help build a fight between Canelo and Golovkin for later in the year in September 2017. That would be a great idea on HBO’s part, because then the boxing fans can see how Canelo does against the same guy that Golovkin just broke last Saturday. However, it’s still questionable whether Golden Boy and Canelo will be taking the fight with Golovkin in 2017.
With Canelo revealing this week that he’s decided to stay at 154, it would seem unlikely that he’ll be moving up to 160 to fight Golovkin. That doesn’t mean that the fight between them can’t still take place, but it might require that Golovkin melt down to 154 if he wants to fight Canelo, because that could be the condition for him to get the fight against the Mexican superstar.
Brook said this to ESPN.com:
“It wasn’t easy but it was natural coming to 160 (pounds). I think I would be strong coming down to 154 and I will take over the 154 division. We’ll go back to the drawing board, go on the (exercise) machines. I have put a lot of muscle on. I think I’d be more suited to 154 pounds. I think I would be big and strong.”
Brook is really kidding himself in thinking he’s going to dominate the junior middleweight division. He’s not going to “take over the 154 division like he says. I can’t see it. I think there’s at least six guys in the junior middleweight division right now that would literally beat the brakes off of Brook starting with Canelo. But you can add the following fighters in the division that would beat Brook just as easily: Jermall Charlo, Julian Williams, Liam Smith, Jermell Charlo, Demtrius Andrade, Erislandy Lara, Charles Hatley, Erickson Lubin, Michael Soro, Willie Nelson, Miguel Cotto, Tony Harrison, Terrel Gaushua and Jarrett Hurd. You can probably add additional six or seven names to that mix of guys at junior middleweight that would beat Brook as well. You’ve got to be sturdy, strong and talented to be a top fighter in the 154lb division right now, and I just don’t see Brook beating those guys.
“I’d love the winner of Liam Smith versus Canelo (Alvarez),” Brook said. “I’ve jumped up two weight divisions and boxed a man everyone is running away from. It wasn’t my night. I am gutted because there was much, much more to come from me and I was just getting started, but I was seeing five of them out there (because of the eye injury).”