By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) and his mandatory challenger Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs) have a purse bid scheduled for February 26, according to Spence. He’s just waiting for the purse bid. He doesn’t know if Brook is going to vacate his IBF title at the last second or what.
Spence is really hoping that Brook doesn’t give up his belt, because he says he wants to personally dethrone him to win the IBF title in the traditional manner rather than getting it outside of the ring. Brook will be entitled to a 75/25 split of the revenue for the Spence fight. That’s something that Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn has been mentioning over and over again, as if he’s already counting the money that Brook will be getting for the fight.
Frankly, I think Hearn keeps mentioning the 75/25 split so that he can scare off Spence and his manager Al Haymon from wanting to take the fight. I don’t think that’s going to work though. Spence needs the IBF belt to use the title for a unification match against the winner of the Danny Garcia vs. Keith Thurman fight.
Spence is hoping to fight the winner of that fight in 2017. It would be a BIG year for Spence if he can take Brook’s scalp, and then follow that up by taking the WBC and WBA titles from the winner of the Garcia-Thurman fight if they agree to fight him, which is still unknown. I think Thurman would possibly fight Spence, but I’m not too sure about Garcia.
Spence said to Fighthype.com this about the Brook fight:
“I’m waiting around now. The purse bid is February 26th,” said Spence about the Brook fight negotiations. “I’m waiting around to see what happens. Hopefully I fight him in March or April. I’m definitely in line for the IBF title. I don’t have to worry. I hope he doesn’t vacate. I want to fight the champion. He’s the champion. He’s the guy. I want to fight him, beat him, and dethrone him. Everybody is going to wait for the purse bid,” said Spence.
It’s sad that Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn isn’t even going to bother trying to negotiate with Spence’s manager Al Haymon. He’s just going to take it to a purse bid and then count on them winning the bid. It would be funny if Haymon won the bid. They could then make Brook fight in the U.S in Texas, Las Vegas, or New York.
Spence would have a huge crowd backing him, and they would put it on Premier Boxing Champions on Showtime. It would be nice to see Spence-Brook in the U.S. I think it would be a good atmosphere. I don’t think it really matters though where the Brook vs. Spence fight takes place. Spence is like another Gennady “GGG” Golovkin, and he’ll be looking to put enormous pressure on Brook from the get go to get him out of there as quickly as possible.
I think Spence will score a faster knockout of Brook than Golovkin did. The reason for that is because Spence will commit to the body much more against Brook compared to how Golovkin did. Golovkin didn’t start looking to hammer Brook to the body until the 5th round of their fight on September 10 in London, UK. Golovkin hurt Brook with a right to the body that caused him to drop his gloves and stop protecting his head in the final moments of the fight.
Spence is just a more relentless body puncher than Golovkin. He doesn’t hit quite as hard as Golovkin, but he punches almost as hard in my opinion, and he’s more willing to throw to the body. Golovkin is more of a head hunter. His trainer Abel Sanchez tries to get him to throw to the body more, but he still mainly focuses on landing head shots. If there was more balance to Golovkin’s attacks, he likely would score faster knockouts. The Brook fight wouldn’t have lasted five rounds if Golovkin attacked him to the body earlier.
I wish I could give Brook a chance at beating Spence, but I can’t. Brook is coming off of a bad eye injury in having his right eye socket broken by Golovkin. Facing Spence in his first fight after that injury is not good news. I think there’s going to be some confidence issues there with Brook in terms of him not being fully 100% confident that his surgically repaired eye will stay together under the heavy shots from Spence.
Even if Brook is confident, you never know if his eye will swell up or not once he starts taking hard shots from Spence. Having a broken eye socket obviously not a good thing. I could see how it might unnerve a lot of fighters in coming back from an injury like that. It might take a number of fights for Brook to get his confidence back. It’s too bad that his first fight back from the injury is against a talent like Spence.
I think Brook is going to need to focus on his boxing skills and use a lot of movement if he doesn’t want to get mowed down by Spence. I wouldn’t blame Brook one bit if he clinched Spence over 10 times per round like he was doing against Shawn Porter in their fight in 2010. Brook will obviously be running from Spence, but he’s not going to be able to do that too effectively, because Spence is superb at cutting off the ring against runners.
Brook is going to get cornered in this fight, and he might need to revert to his clinching to keep from getting bludgeoned into submission. I don’t think Brook’s trainer Dominic Ingle will allow him to get smashed into the canvas. I think Ingle will have the towel in his hand ready in every round of the fight to quickly toss it into the ring to keep Brook from being knocked out badly by Spence.
We saw how Ingle quickly tossed the towel into the ring when Brook was getting worked over by Golovkin in round five. I think that habit is one that Ingle will have a hard time breaking when it comes to Brook. I think it’ll be an unconscious thing where Ingle instinctively tosses the white towel into the ring the first hint of danger for Brook. That’s why it might be a good idea for Brook to hide the towels in the corner for the Spence fight just in case Ingle just tosses it into the ring for the heck of it when things start looking even slightly bad.
“After I beat him [Brook], I can go fight the winner of Danny Garcia and Keith Thurman,” said Spence. “Hopefully, I’ll get in the ring with them this year. I’ve got a slight edge for Danny. Danny, even when he’s losing, he always finds a way to win. He has that factor. Danny’s a good fighter. He doesn’t do anything that’s great, but he just knows how to win,” said Spence.
Whether Spence gets a shot against the winner of the Thurman vs. Garcia fight will depend on his manager Al Haymon and on who wins that fight. Like I said, if Garcia beats Thurman, then no way do I see Garcia and his trainer/father Angel Garcia agreeing to fight Spence. I see them taking it easy by simply defending the WBA/WBC titles against the contenders in the top 15. There are no real threats that would keep the Garcia-Thurman winner from milking those titles for a while. Shawn Porter already lost to Thurman.
When asked if he’d like to fight Manny Pacquiao, Spence said, “I’d love to fight Manny Pacquiao. Nah, that name was never mentioned to me. Hopefully when I win this belt, it will be mentioned.”
Spence can forget about Pacquiao. He’s with Top Rank, and I don’t think his 85-year-old promoter Bob Arum will put him in with Spence. I think Arum wants to have Pacquiao focus exclusively on fighting just his own Top Rank guys Vasyl Lomachenko, Terence Crawford, Jessie Vargas and Tim Bradley until he retires from the sport. Pacquiao has already fought Bradley 3 times and Vargas once. I figure that Arum will match Pacquiao up with Lomachenko and Crawford at least once each, possibly twice if he sticks around long enough.
I hope Brook doesn’t vacate his IBF title to avoid the Spence fight. If Brook does take the fight, I hope he doesn’t start with the excuses afterwards about being weight drained or having another injury of one kind or another. It’s always bad when you start hearing about excuses. Brook didn’t give Golovkin too much credit for beating hm last September. We heard from Brook the outcome would have been different if he’d not suffered his eye injury. The boxing public bought into the excuses from Brook. I hope hope that Brook doesn’t do the same thing for the Spence fight, because I’m not sure that the fans would give Brook a pass the second time around. Excuses only work so many times before the fans catch on and stop believing them. I’m just saying.