By Scott Gilfoid: The scheduled purse bid for this Tuesday for the Kell “Special K” Brook vs. Errol Spence fight has been put off by one week, as the two fighters’ management are said to be close to a deal, according to Dan Rafael. It looks like Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn is getting cold feet all of a sudden at the thought of the fight going to a purse bid.
Spence has a high powered manager in Al Haymon, who would have a very good chance of winning the purse bid. If Spence’s management wins the purse bid, then you can bet they would stage the fight in the U.S, and that would eliminate any real chance of Brook winning.
“The Special K Brook-Errol Spence Jr. purse bid slated for Tues has been put off by 1 week at request of both sides as they get close to a deal,” said Rafael on his social media site.
Spence’s management needs to be pushing to have the fight in the U.S because that’s the only reason I could see for them to be negotiating a deal.
If they’re just negotiating to give Spence a little more cash, then I don’t see that as nearly as important as trying to get the fight in either the U. S or a neutral venue in some other country. Obviously, that’s not going to happen. The Brook-Spence fight will be taking place either in the U.S or the UK. It probably won’t matter if it does take place in the UK though, because Brook is not going to be able to stand his ground against a puncher like Spence.
It doesn’t matter if Brook is cheered the entire time by his British boxing fans. If Brook can’t stand and make a fight of it, then he’s going to be speared all night long with body shots while he runs around the ring trying to evade Spence. As we saw in Brook’s last fight against Gennady Golovkin, he can’t win a fight by running unless you get oddball scoring from the judges.
Spence is going to be throwing heat-seeking missiles to the body of Brook from round one. It doesn’t matter how much movement that Brook uses in the fight. Spence is going to have no trouble landing his shots to the body. I’d like to think that Brook will stand and fight in a one on one manner like he did in his wins over Kevin Bizier, Frankie Gavin and Jo Jo Dan. That was Brook at his best. He’s not effective when he’s running around the ring like he was against Golovkin, and he’s not effective when he’d holding 10+ times per round like he did against Shawn Porter.
The fact that Hearn is looking to make a deal with Spence’s management reeks of fear on Hearn’s part. Why would Hearn want to make a deal with Spence when Brook is going to get a nice 75/25 split of the loot for the fight if it goes to a purse bid? With that kind of cash, there’s no point in trying to make a deal with Spence unless you’re worried that you might lose the purse bid. I’m just saying. I smell fear.
If Hearn loses the purse bid, which is very possible, then Brook will have to fight Spence in the U.S in front of a large crowd. This wouldn’t be Brook’s fans that would be coming out to see the Brook-Spence fight if it were to be staged in the U.S. It would be Spence’s boxing fans. I could see the fight being staged in Spence’s hometown of New York. There wouldn’t be many of Brook’s fans in the audience if the fight takes place in New York.
The fans would be cheering Spence if he even looked at Brook wrong. It would be a huge pile of Spence fans if the fight is staged in that part of the U.S. What would that mean for Brook? I’d say it would mean that he would be out there on his own without his loyal boxing fans to help energize him the way they did at times in his last fight against Gennady Golovkin on September 10 last year. Brook is one of those fighters that seem to draw energy from the crowd. If you take the crowd away, he’s like Samson with his hair cut off. He no longer has his strength and he’s unable to do much.
Many boxing fans believe that Brook can’t beat Spence unless the fight is in front of his own fans in the UK. If Brook can get the Spence fight in the UK, then he might be able to win a decision if the fight makes it to the 12th round. I don’t think it will, but that might be Brook’s only chance of winning the fight.
Look at the scoring for Brook’s last fight against middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. Brook was losing the fight in the mind of HBO’s unofficial scorer Harold Lederman by a 3 rounds to 1 score. However, the judges that worked the fight, which took place in London, England, had the fight scored 3 rounds to 1 in favor of Brook, and the other two had it 2 rounds a piece. I had Golovkin easily winning 3 rounds to 1 going into the 5th round. To score the fight 3 rounds to 1 in favor or Brook, it would mean that you would need to give rounds to him in which he was getting belted around the ring by Golovkin. You can’t give Brook round 1 because he was staggered and almost knocked out by Golovkin. You can’t give Brook round 3, because he almost had his head taken off by a right hand from Golovkin. Brook also appeared to be dropped by Golovkin in the 3rd. You couldn’t give Brook round 4, because he looked like he was in the panic mode from the increased pressure that Golovkin was putting on him. Brook was in the retreat mode by that point in the fight, and no longer willing or able to stand his ground for any length of time.
There are a lot of questions that you have to ask about Brook going into the Spence fight. For starters, will Brook’s busted right eye socket hold up under the pounding from Spence’s heavy fists? Moreover, will Brook have the confidence to take head shots from Spence, who maybe the hardest puncher in the welterweight division right now. I mean, Spence isn’t as powerful as Golovkin in terms of sure power with his punches, but I don’t think there’s much difference between their power levels. When you get to the kind of power that Spence and Golovkin has, it doesn’t matter if one of them is a little more powerful than the other one.
They’re both so strong that they do incredible damage each time they land one of their big power shots. We saw what Spence did to Chris Algieri last year in destroying him in five rounds on April 16. This is the same Algieri that went the distance with big punchers like Ruslan Provodnikov and Manny Pacquiao. Algieri couldn’t handle Spence’s power, and he crumbled like a deck of cards from his thunderous shots to the head and body.
In Spence’s last fight, he obliterated a very good fighter in Leonard Bundu by a 6th round knockout on August 21 in Coney Island, New York. This is the same Bundu that had given Keith Thurman fits in their fight in December 2014. Thurman had been saying before the Spence-Bundu fight that he wanted to see what Spence would do against Bundu, because he felt he would give him problems. When Spence went out and destroyed Bundu, Thurman didn’t have much to say about it