By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) posted a Tweet on Sunday saying that he WILL NOT be vacating his IBF title in order to avoid his mandatory challenger Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs), and that he’s never avoided an opponent during his career.
This is good news for the boxing world, because there’s many of them that believe that Brook and his promoter Eddie Hearn will avoid Spence. Hearn has been in negotiations with Spence’s promoter and they were reportedly close to making a deal. However, there’s a scheduled purse bid on Tuesday, February 14 for the Brook-Spence fight.
If they don’t make a deal by that time, then it’s going to come down to the purse bid. Brook will be given a 75-25 split of the revenue for the Spence fight, as mandated by the International Boxing Federation.
All that work just to give it up?Never ducked a challenge in my life. Here to give the fans what they want @ErrolSpenceJr you are next 🇬🇧🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/gT5tJKA8jc
— Kell Brook (@SpecialKBrook) February 12, 2017
I’d like to know if Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn has made a last ditch effort to try and talk some sense into him to get him to vacate his IBF title and move up to 154. Hearn doesn’t sound excited about Brook taking the fight with Spence.
This decision by Brook to fight Spence may end up haunting him. Brook suffered a broken right eye socket in his loss to Golovkin. The injury required surgery to fix it. Brook hasn’t fought since then. When a fighter is coming back after an eye injury, they sometimes don’t have the same fire that they did before the injury.
Brook will be facing one of the biggest punchers in the 147lb division in Errol Spence. Without a tune-up to test out the eye and to regain his confidence, Brook could be making a mistake. His confidence may be his undoing in this fight because Spence is going to be hitting him everything he’s got. While Spence doesn’t possess Golovkin’s punching power, he punches close enough to that level for him to cause Brook to not want to trade with him.
Brook is sounding confident. It’s not surprising though, Brook was talking himself up before his last fight against Golovkin, and he still lost the fight. Brook landed some shots here and there, but he mostly ran around the ring trying to avoid Golovkin’s shots. Golovkin found out how hard it is to win rounds against Brook, as the judges were giving a lot of rounds to him despite the fact that he was mostly just moving around rather than fighting.
Spence says he doesn’t mind traveling to the UK to fight Brook in front of his own British boxing fans if he has to. Spence doesn’t care. He’s that confident he’ll win the fight. Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn wants to stage the Spence fight at Bramall Lane in Sheffield, UK. It’s a football stadium that seats 32,702 fans. Brook-Spence might not be able to bring in that many boxing fans, but there should be a lot of fans to see the fight due to it being Brook’s hometown.
Brook lost his last fight to IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin by a 5th round knockout on September 10 last year. That was a fight that was stopped at the request of Brook’s trainer Dominic Ingle in round 5 after Brook stopped throwing punches. Golovkin was landing at will in the final moments of that fight.
“I’ll be back in the ring soon #Man Down,” said Spence on his Twitter.
When asked by a fan if he’s willing to fight Brook in the UK, Spence said, “Not a problem.”
Ideally, Spence would probably like to fight Brook in the U.S rather than in the UK, but his promoter will need to win the purse bid against Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn, who has a deal with Sky Sports to have his boxing fighters televised on their network.
Spence is seen by some boxing experts to be the replacement for Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the 147lb division. He’s viewed as the next star. It’s unfortunate that Brook is going to have to face such a talented fighter as Spence, because his promoter Eddie Hearn has been suggesting over and over again that he needs to move up to the 154lb division. Hearn says Brook needs to move up because it’s too hard on his body to make the 147lb limit, but some think that he just doesn’t believe he has the talent to compete with Spence.