By Scott Gilfoid: Kell Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) suffered a bad eye injury in his 5th round TKO loss to middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) on September 10 in their fight on Sky Box Office PPV and HBO. Brook was offered the fight by his promoter Eddie Hearn after Chris Eubank Jr. wouldn’t bite on the deal.
Agreeing to the deal gave the 30-year-old Brook his biggest payday of his career, as well making him known to many casual boxing fans that had never heard of him before. However, Brook’s right eye socket was broken by a left hook from GGG early in the 1st round, and the injury eventually caused the fight to be halted by his trainer Dominic Ingle in round 5.
Brook hasn’t fought since the loss to Triple G, as he needed eye surgery to repair the problem and a long period of time to recover. Brook was already ordered to fight Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs), the young American knockout artist that many boxing fans peg as the next Floyd Mayweather Jr. to take over the sport.
Since Brook hasn’t officially vacated his IBF welterweight title yet, he’s got Spence ready to start in where Golovkin left off in the 5th to start chopping Brook down when/if the two fight each other in the first quarter of 2017. Brook has one lifeline that could save him from having to fight Spence, and that’s Amir Khan. He’s talked about wanting to fight Brook.
I don’t know how serious Khan is. He might just be flapping his gums just saying whatever comes out of his mouth for the heck of it. Brook and his promoter Eddie Hearn obviously have gotten their hopes of in hearing the Khan news. If Khan comes through for the fight, then Brook can vacate his IBF title to avoid a potential Golovkin-esque knockout loss to Spence.
Believe me, there are a lot of boxing fans out there who think Spence will do the same thing to Brook that Golovkin did. Spence is quicker on his feet in cutting off the ring and better at moving in straight lines to cut off a runner like Brook. I’ve seen Spence chop apart fighters that tried to hold him to keep him from throwing punches on the inside.
That’s not good for Brook, because he loves to hold to try and smother his opponent’s offense.
I think there’s a very good chance that Khan could beat Brook as well right now. Before Brook suffered his eye injury, he’d likely have beaten Khan with no problems. But with Brook returning from a serious eye injury, he’s going to be vulnerable to even a guy like Khan. This isn’t the same Khan that we’ve seen through most of his career. He’s had a hand injury his entire career that has kept him from being able to use his right hand to throw power shots with maximum power.
Khan recently had his hand operated on, and he’s now able to get the power on his shots that he never could before. What this means is that Khan is going to be hitting with full power now, and that could make a big difference in a fight against Brook. Khan has faster hands than Brook, and if he lands square on his surgically repaired right eye, he could cause the eye to swell up and close.
Further, Brook might start running from Khan just like he ran from Golovkin for five rounds last September. Khan is quick on his feet, and he’s not going to let Brook get away from. This fight could be much different than the fans think it will be.
Since we still haven’t seen Brook fight yet, it’s impossible to know if he’s going to be able to comeback from the loss to GGG. With an eye injury like a broken eye socket, you have question marks about whether the eye will close up as soon as Brook starts getting hit directly on. Brook hasn’t fought yet, so we don’t know.
The eye could swell up and close immediately once starts getting hit. Who can forget how Antonio Margarito’s surgically repaired eye closed up on him in his rematch against Miguel Cotto five years ago in 2011. There’s also the mental aspect for Brook in trying to comeback from an eye problem.
Will Brook be comfortable getting hit in the eye or will the worry cause him to go to pieces mentally? We saw how Brook was running from 1st round trying to flee from Golovkin. There was no real steady resistance from Brook. It was all quick stuff where he would land one or two shots, and then take off before Golovkin could hit him back.
The problem for Brook is he was never going to win the fight with his hit and run style. You can’t win a fight like that when you’ve got someone going after you at double-time the way that Golovkin was. The only thing that Brook succeeded at with his running was delaying the inevitable.
Brook’s fight with Golovkin may wind up leaving him a shell of the fighter that he was before both physically and mentally.