By Scott Gilfoid: Former world title challenger Gabriel Rosado thinks it’s a bad idea that welterweight Kell Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) is moving up in weight two divisions to challenge IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) on September 10. Rosado thinks Brook could get damaged permanently by Golovkin from a potential brutal beating that he inflicts on him.
Rosado points out that many fighters are never the same after they take a really bad beating inside the ring. With Brook moving up in weight to face one of the most dangerous punchers in the 160lb division, he’s taking big risk against Golovkin.
Rosado compares the move to him if he were to move from middleweight to challenge unbeaten light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev. Rosado says he wouldn’t do it. There are limits to what he’s willing to do with his career, and fighting Kovalev would be one of them.
“It makes sense business-wise. He’s still champion at 147,” said Rosado to Fightype.com about Brook’s decision to move up two weight classes to challenge middleweight champion Golovkin for his titles. “If he wins, great. If he loses, he was supposed to lose. I think he shouldn’t have done it. He has some big fights at 147. In boxing, it only takes one fight to damage you forever. How many guys have we seen in one fight and they never bounce back. Being in a fight that is so competitive and so brutal, it’s like a car wreck. You never bounce back. It could be the type of fight where he gets destroyed so bad that we’ll never see the same Brook. So was it worth it business-wise? I hope that it is. Those are the chances he’s taking right now,” said Rosado.
Brook is going to make a lot of money in the Golovkin fight, as it’ll be televised on Sky Box Office pay-per-view in the UK and on HBO Championship Boxing in the States. The fight has already sold out all 20,000 tickets for the O2 Arena in London, England. The gate will be large, and the money from pay-per-view could be a lot for Brook. As such, if Brook does take a career-ending beating, he’ll be getting a lot of money for it.
If Brook’s career is never the same after this fight, then it will have been a bad decision on his part in stepping up two weight classes. We just saw welterweight Amir Khan knocked completely out by the hulking middleweight Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in the 6th round last May.
We still haven’t seen yet whether Khan will be the same fighter when he returns to the ring next year. If Khan can no longer take a head shot without nose diving into the canvas head first, then you would have to consider that his loss to Canelo possibly did something to him to make him more susceptible to shots.
In talking about Brook’s decision to bulk up in weight to the 170s, Rosado said, “I don’t think that it’s good at all. I think it’s best that if he stayed low, stayed quick, stayed sharp. Getting bigger isn’t going to make you stronger. It’s going to make you sluggish. I came up from 54 and felt the distance [against Golovkin], and I said ‘whoa.’ I felt it right away. This is like me going up and fighting Kovalev now. I’m a middleweight. I’m not fighting Kovalev. That’s where it stops,” said Rosado.
Dealing with the punching power from Golovkin is going to be a shock for Brook, because he’s been fighting mostly weak welterweights during his career. Brook had that one fight against Shawn Porter in 2014, but he didn’t get hit much in that fight because he was holding most of the night. The referee wasn’t doing anything to keep Brook from not limiting his constant clinching.
Brook didn’t have to get hit a lot in the fight, because he was allowed to stall out the rounds with his excessive holding. At the same time, Porter didn’t have the training to deal with someone that was using constant holding as a tactic. Porter kept looking at the referee in disbelief that he wasn’t doing anything to limit the nonstop clinching from Brook. The difference in Saturday’s fight is that Golovkin DOES know how to deal with fighters that hold excessively, so Brook won’t be able to spoil like that again to keep from getting hit.
Brook’s training has been with junior middleweight Liam Williams, who doesn’t have big punching power like Golovkin. It’s going to be a whole new experience for Brook on Saturday in facing a tremendous puncher in Golovkin. About the only thing you can recommend is that Brook’s trainer Dominic Ingle be ready to throw in the towel if/when the beating gets too bad for him.
For the sake of Brook’s health and career, Ingle needs to be ready to throw in the towel at some point if Golovkin is just teeing off on him without let up. At some point, it won’t be worth it for Brook to continue to soak up punishment like a human punching bag with arms. It’ll be up to Ingle or even Brook himself to know when enough is enough. There’s no shame in quitting. We saw Brook holding all night long against Porter as a sign that he didn’t feel up to it.
Yeah, Rosado is right about Brook making a mistake in bulking up for the Golovkin fight. It seems like a bad decision on Brook’s part, because all that extra weight isn’t going to help him punch any harder and it likely won’t let help him absorb punches any better than before. It’s likely just going to make Brook get tired quicker in the fight. Once Brook gets tired, then he’s going to be susceptible to getting knocked out. It’s important for Brook to be fast in this fight against Golovkin because he might need to be able to get away from him. If the holding tactics don’t work, then Brook will have only two options available to him. He can either move or stand and slug with Golovkin. Neither of those options will likely work.