By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook could be back in action by March or April 2017 in making his mandatory defense against unbeaten #1 IBF Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs), according to his promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport. Brook says he wants to knockout Spence, according to Hearn. Brook believes he can do it too. He doesn’t want to be seen vacating his IBF 147lb title, because the boxing fans will think he’s avoiding the Spence fight.
Hearn says Brooks surgically repaired right eye is doing great, and he’s back in training once again. Brook suffered the eye injury in his 5th round knockout loss to IBF/IBO/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) last September in London, UK. Brook refuses to give up his IBF belt to move to the 154lb division despite Hearn believing that he would be better in that weight class.
Hearn said this about Brook’s timeline for a fight against Spence via Fighthype.com and other boxing media:
“Kell’s eye is great. He’s back in training,” said Hearn. “I told him if you’re going to move to 154, you’ve got to vacate the belt. He said, ‘I’m not going to vacate the belt. Everyone’s going to say I’m running from Errol Spence. I want to knock Errol Spence out.’ I said, ‘then knock Errol Spence out.’ We want to do that fight in March or April in the UK. 75/25 split unless Mr. Haymon wants to purse a lot of money, which we’re open to as well,” said Hearn.
I sure like the way Hearn keeps mentioning that 75/25 split for the Brook-Spence fight, because it gives me the impression that he’s hoping Spence’s management will take issue with the split and give up on the idea of challenging for the IBF title. It’s not going to happen. Spence has already made it perfectly clear that he wants Brook’s IBF strap and he’s not going to back out of the fight. As such, Hearn can keep mentioning the 75/25 split until he’d blue in the fact, and he’s still going to have to deal with Spence coming after Brook in March or April 2017 looking to give him another loss on his resume.
Brook’s 5th round knockout loss to Golovkin wasn’t a fatal blow to his career, because it after all was a loss to the most feared middleweight in the division. Brook got a free pass, because he was moving up in weight from the 147lb division to take on what most boxing fans see as the best fighter in the 160lb division. But if Brook loses to Spence at welterweight, then there won’t be a free pass this time.
The fans will see Brook as not good enough to beat a guy in his own division at 147. That might be one of the reasons why Hearn keeps mentioning weight , and how he’s recommended to Brook that he move up to 154. Could it be that we’re seeing the early implantation of an excuse for Hearn to use to the fans if Brook loses to Spence?
Instead of Hearn having to tell the boxing fans that Brook wasn’t good enough to beat Spence, he could blame the loss on Brook’s struggles to make 147. Oh man, it’s all so predictable. Gilfoid can see it all coming from a mile away. The problem with that excuse is that when Brook does move up to 154, he’s not going to do any better in that division against those monsters.
What happens when Brook gets royally thrashed by the likes of Demetrius Andrade, Erislandy Lara, Julian “J-Rock” Williams and the Charlo brothers? What will Hearn say then? ‘Oh, Brook was having a hard time getting acclimatized to the new 154lb weight. It’s going to take him time to get used to it.’ Sorry, it’s not going to work, because the boxing public won’t buy an excuse like that.
If Brook loses over and over again at 154, he’ll either have to accept that he’s not a good fighter for the division or he’ll have to move back down to 147, which is what I see happening with him. He’ll move back down and just be a contender. It’ll be no difference, because he still won’t be able to hang with Spence or the likes of Keith Thurman.
When asked if Brook can still make 147, Hearn said, “Not comfortably, but he can still make it, yeah. I feel like he’ll [Brook] be better at 154, but he’s not going to vacate his belt, so it’s irrelevant. He’s done all the tests. They all believe he can make the weight comfortably. It’s tough to make the weight,” said Hearn.
I almost feel sorry for Brook, considering that he’s going to be facing a very, very good fighter in Errol Spence in his next fight if Brook doesn’t get injured training or decide it’s better not to take the fight. Facing a talent like Spence is almost like Brook fighting Golovkin again. I’m just saying. It’s a bad match-up for a fighter coming off of a beat down and a bad eye injury like Brook did. We heard the excuses for Brook’s loss to Golovkin with Brook blaming it on his eye injury. I don’t buy that excuse. But then again, I saw the fight, and I saw how the pressure from Golovkin caused Brook to wilt starting from the 3rd round. Brook got dropped in that round with a left hook to the head.
The referee blew the call by not scoring the knockdown. It didn’t matter. Brook was running around the ring like a chicken with it’s head cut off. Brook landed some shots every now and then when he would stop running. Heck, any fighter would land shots if they were facing a guy that didn’t care if he was hit or not like Golovkin was. Golovkin was looking to destroy Brook from round 3.
Going from getting bludgeoned into submission by Golovkin to facing a terror like Spence is going to be a real problem for Brook. It’s going to be the same thing for Brook, I hate to say. Assuming that Brook stands and fights Spence, he’s going to get taken apart piece by piece by the talented 2012 U.S Olympian. If Brook doesn’t resort to running or using nonstop holding, I think he’s going to royally smashed by Spence.
It’s likely that Brook will at least try and fight Spence initially, because the fight will be taking place in the UK in front of a horde of his fans. Brook can’t be seen running in front of all of boxing fans, because it would look bad. What I see Brook doing instead is using a lot of holding against Spence to keep him from throwing punches. In other words, Brook will do the same thing he did in his ugly 12 round decision win over Shawn Porter in 2014 by grabbing Spence in a clinch each time he tries to throw a punch. I thought Brook should have been disqualified in the Porter fight for excessive clinching. The referee let Brook hold all night without doing anything about it. It was pretty sad how ugly that fight was. It wasn’t a boxing match. It was like watching an MMA guy fight a boxer without there being a referee inside the ring.
Spence is coming off of a fine 6th round knockout win over Leonard Bundu last August. Before that fight, Spence destroyed former WBO light welterweight champion Chris Algieri in five rounds last April.
In speaking about his long hoped for fight between Brook and Amir Khan, Hearn said, “We’ve been talking about this fight for five years. I can’t understand why that fight can’t be made. It’s the biggest fight out there for both guys. I’d like to make the [Manny] Pacquiao fight for Kell Brook. I think Pacquiao would be looking for a big fight after the last one, and that’s probably not Kell Brook for his eyes.”
Hearn can keep wishing and hoping that Manny Pacquiao will agree to fight Brook in a unification match, but I don’t see it happening. I know it would make things easy if Pacquiao would do that. If Brook got lucky and beat Pacquiao, then he could drop the IBF title in order to get rid of his Errol Spence problem. Brook would then be the WBO belt holder, and could defend the strap against light hitting Top Rank fighters like Jessie Vargas and Tim Bradley.
Spence would be out of Brook’s hair entirely for the time being until Brook loses to someone in the WBO’s rankings. Never the less, Pacquiao isn’t going to fight Brook, because he’s not a big name in the U.S, and because his promoter Bob Arum will never in a million years have him fight Brook. I see Arum making sure Pacquiao only fights his Top Rank guys for the remainder of his career in order to keep the money in house, and to increase the value of his Top Rank fighters. Brook is not going to get a fight against Pacquiao. If Pacquiao had a lot of time left, then yes, I think Arum would let that fight happen. He let Pacquiao fight non-Top Rank fighter Chris Algieri two years ago in 2014. But with Pacquiao nearing the end of his career, I see Arum making sure he only fights guys in his own Top Rank stable until he retires.
