By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) is supposed to be fighting his mandatory challenger #1 IBF Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs) next, but he’s instead saying he wants to fight Amir Khan, Manny Pacquiao or the winner of the Keith Thurman vs. Danny Garcia fight. From the way that Brook is talking, he would jump at the chance of taking on Pacquiao, Khan or the Thurman-Garcia winner rather than fighting the hard hitting unbeaten Spence. The magical question is will Brook get his way?
I must say I’m not too motivated by the way that Brook is talking about sidestepping the Spence fight. After the way that Brook was eager to face his past mandatory challengers Jo Jo Dan and Kevin Bizier, it seems strange how he’s no longer excited about fighting his mandatory now that it’s the 26-year-old Spence instead of those guys.
The obvious question is why doesn’t Brook just vacate his International Boxing Federation 147lb title if he prefers to fight Khan, Pacquiao, Thurman or Garcia? The obvious answer is that Brook stands a better chance of getting one of those guys to fight him if he’s got the IBF title in his possession to use as bait. Without IBF strap, Brook is just a little known guy that the casual boxing fans in the U.S don’t know.
The casual fans that do know Brook know him from his 5th round knockout loss to middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin last September. That was the fight in which Brook ran round the ring for five rounds land an occasional shot before his trainer threw in the towel in the 5th after he was hurt by Golovkin. Brook didn’t go out on his shield in that fight, because his trainer saved him from that fate by tossing in the towel after he’d been hurt by Golovkin.
There was little chance that Brook was make it out of the 5th round, because he was trapped and hurt after suffering an eye injury and being hurt by a body shot from Golovkin.
Brook said this to Fighthype.com about the Spence fight and how he would prefer to fight the Garcia vs. Thurman winner or Pacquiao:
“It took me a long time to get that world title at welterweight and I just can’t give it up, you know, as much as it’s going to kill me to make the weight…Spence is the mandatory, he’s a very good fighter…maybe a fantastic fighter. I think I can make it and be strong at the weight. He’s not really heard of, but he can fight,” Brook said about U.S 2012 Olympian Spence. “We’ve seen him fight. It’s maybe a fantastic fight, but there’s Keith Thurman and Danny Garcia. They’re fighting each other. I’d love the winner. I’d love a unification with Manny Pacquiao.. I heard in the press that I inspired him in the Golovkin fight to come back to the sport. So why not lock horns together and fight each other? I’d love to eventually fight Canelo and all the top fighters in that weight [154].”
It does look bad how Brook is chasing other fighters that have no interest in fighting him. Khan hasn’t talked of wanting to fight Brook and neither has Pacquiao. Garcia and Thurman won’t finish their business until March. Brook can’t just freeze his IBF title until after that fight. Brook’s 60-day medical extension expires in February.
If Brook wants to ask for another medical extension he can, but I don’t think that’s going to change the fact that Spence will be waiting for him so that he can get his WBA mandated title shot. Of course, Brook can always try and give Spence step aside money to avoid fighting him, but I don’t know if he would be willing to accept that. Spence is better off fighting Brook, because beating him will raise his marketability in the boxing world.
It will also give him the IBF title that he can use to fight the winner of the Garcia vs. Thurman fight or to fight Pacquiao. It’s not in Spence’s best interest to take a step aside fee. We saw how it didn’t help Gennady Golovkin in taking a step aside payment to let the Miguel Cotto vs. Canelo Alvarez fight take place. Golovkin wound up still getting avoided, and he wasted time by not forcing Cotto to vacate his WBC title.
Brook’s pipe dream of Pacquiao fighting him in a unification match is a waste of time, because it’s not going to happen. Pacquiao isn’t going to take the fight with Brook. Even if he wanted to, his promoter Bob Arum would likely veto it in favor of matching Pacquiao against one of his own Top Rank stable fighters. Brook is a runner and clincher, and those are not the type of guys that Pacquiao likes to fight.
If Pacquiao is going to fight a runner, it’ll be either Vasyl Lomachenko or Terence Crawford. He’s not going to waste time having to chase Brook around the ring and have him clinching to him when he does catch up to him. Who can forget the Brook vs. Shawn Porter fight from 2014? Brook was holding Porter every chance he could get, making the fight virtually unwatchable. I thought Brook should have been disqualified many times over in that fight due to all the holding he did.
You can’t blame Brook for wanting to get a big payday while he’s the IBF belt holder, but he can’t freeze the IBF title and the career of Spence in the process while he tries to get these payday fights. Brook already fought outside of the welterweight division in his last fight when he moved up to the middleweight division to fight Golovkin last September. Spence waited patiently for Brook to come back down to 147, but now he’s talking about wanting to side step the Spence fight so that he can get a payday fight against Pacquiao, Khan or the Garcia-Thurman winner.
You can argue that Brook doesn’t want to fight Spence because of the potential of him getting knocked out by the talented American fighter. It’s no secret that once Brook gets blasted out by Spence, he can pretty much forget about a big payday fight against Pacquiao and the winner of the Garcia-Thurman fight. Those guys would have zero reason to fight Brook after he gets blasted to smithereens by Spence.
Khan might still fight Brook, but the money in that fight would likely be a heck of a lot less after Brook loses to Spence than if he were to fight him right now. It would be a second straight knockout loss for Brook. There wouldn’t be the built in excuse for the KO loss like there was last time for Brook due to Spence being a welterweight and not a middleweight like Golovkin.
Brook is required to fight his mandatory challenger Spence. He can’t just put him on ignore unless he wants to vacate his IBF title. If Brook is as good as his promoter Eddie Hearn thinks he is, then he should go ahead and take the fight with Spence. Hearn has been flapping his gums recently in saying that he believes that Brook is the best welterweight in the division. Now it’s Hearn’s chance to have Brook prove he’s the best fighter at 147 by him taking on and beating Spence.
