By Scott Gilfoid: The International Boxing Federation Chairman Lindsey E. Tucker has reportedly given IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) a 60-day medical extension due to his broken right eye socket that he suffered in his 5th round TKO loss to IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 Kos) last month on September 10 in London, England.
The IBF was going to order Brook to start negotiations for a fight against his #1 IBF mandatory challenger Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs) for a fight that would likely take place in early 2017. However, with the IBF giving the 30-year-old Brook a 60-day extension, it buys him time before he needs to make a decision whether to take on the talented 26-year-old Spence or vacate and go in another direction.
What’s interesting is that Brook hasn’t vacated his IBF 147lb title yet, because he’s repeatedly said recently that he was going to move up to the 154lb division to look for the big fights against the likes of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Miguel Cotto, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Amir Khan or Manny Pacquiao.
The odds of Brook getting any of those fighters to face him in his next fight would have to be seen as not good. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum is talking about wanting to have him fight one of his own Top Rank fighters next like Vasyl Lomachenko or Terence Crawford. Floyd Mayweather Jr. hasn’t talked at all lately about wanting to return to the ring. If Mayweather does return, he sure as heck isn’t going to fight someone who doesn’t have a fan base in the U.S like Brook. He’ll fight a popular guy that can bring in PPV buys.
Cotto is still fighting, but he would likely go for a rematch against Canelo, especially given the Mexican fighters’ recent comments about being interested in fighting him again. Khan is out with an injury until early 2017, and he’s talking about wanting to fight WBC welterweight champion Danny Garcia or WBA champion Keith Thurman. Khan wants the winner of the Garcia vs. Thurman fight. There’s really not a lot of options for Brook right now.
”Kell Brook asked for and was granted a 60 day Medical Extension,” IBF Chairman Lindsey E. Tucker said to RingTV.com. “Once that is over, we will order him to start negotiations with mandatory challenger Errol Spence. The Medical Extension gives the Champion 60 days past his mandatory due date. His mandatory due day was December 26, 2016.”
I hope Brook isn’t going to just sit on his IBF title like a mother hen until the last minute before he vacates the title. That would be a real time waster for Spence, because he’s going to have to waste valuable career time waiting for Brook to make a decision about what he’s going to do with his IBF belt.
Frankly, I believe Brook has already made up his mind what he plans on doing with his IBF title, which is to give it up. However, it’s anyone’s guess what Brook and his promoter Eddie Hearn will do as far as his IBF welterweight title. If Brook just keeping it as long as possible as a trophy to make him seem relevant to the boxing fans until his broken right eye socket is completely healed, or does Brook really intend on defending title against Spence? I hate to say it, but I think Brook is just keeping the IBF title for now so that he can be seen as a champion by casual and hardcore boxing fans until his eye heals up.
Once Brook is ready to fight again, I see him getting rid of the IBF title in lightning speed to distance himself from the belt so that he doesn’t need to step inside the ring with the welterweight monster Errol Spence. I think Spence is clearly the best fighter in the 147lb division hands down, and I can see him doing the exact same thing to Brook that Golovkin did.
Spence has the kind of talent that would enable him to do an even better job against Brook than Golovkin did, because he would make sure he wasn’t hit as much. Spence is a ferocious body puncher, and he’d got a devastating uppercut that he likes to throw. I don’t think Brook could handle Spence’s body attack.
The downfall for Brook in his loss to Golovkin last September was him getting hit with a hard right hand to the body in the 5th round. I’ve seen the round in slow motion a dozen times, and it’s pretty clear that Golovkin hurt Brook with a body shot after trapping him against the ropes. After that body shot landed, Brook dropped his gloves entirely and took head shots repeatedly. Brook tried to move his head to avoid the punches from GGG, but he was still nailed. At that point, Brook used the ropes as a walking cane to get to the other side of the ring. Brook looked like an old man needing to hold onto the ropes with one hand while he walked along the edges of the ring. The whole time, Golovkin was pelting Brook with shots.
You can then see Brook’s trainer Dominic Ingle grab the white towel of surrender and stand up on the outside of the ropes watching the destruction. When Golovkin trapped Brook against in what was clearly the last stand for “Special K,” Ingle threw in the white towel to have the fight stopped. He didn’t want to let Brook get finished off, because he realized there wasn’t going to be a lucky punch coming from Brook to save the day. Brook was finished and was only seconds from being dropped if the fight had been allowed to continue.
As soon as the referee stopped the fight, Brook staggered like a drunken sailor for a couple of steps and slowly he walked back to his corner on unsteady legs. Brook looked terrible, but he was very, very lucky that his trainer threw in the towel, because he surely would have been finished off in his final last stand. There was no escaping the spot that Golovkin had trapped Brook. He was trapped, and there would have been only one outcome if the fight hadn’t been stopped by his trainer.
I honestly do not see Brook defending his IBF title against Spence, but you never know. It would be a good career move for Brook to take the fight, because if he were to beat Spence, his stock would shoot to the moon. At the same time, Spence is unquestionably a better fighter than Brook could ever to be in my opinion, and I see that as being another massacre like the one we saw in the 5th round in the Golovkin vs. Brook fight.
Spence Jr. is coming off of an impressive 6th round knockout win over Leonard Bundu last August in their IBF welterweight title eliminator in beautiful Coney Island, New York. Spence dropped Bundu twice in the 6th round to get a knockout. Bundu is a tough customer, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he gave Brook all kinds of problems if the two of them faced each other. I think Brook would win, but it would be a really hard fight for him, because Bundu is a good body puncher, and that seems to be Brook’s Achilles heel.