By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight Kell Brook hasn’t even taken care of his title challenger Errol Spence Jr. in their scheduled fight on May 20, and yet he’s already squawking about wanting to face unified WBA/WBC welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman. Brook, 30, says he wants to unify the 147 pound division before he moves up to 154 to start campaigning in that division.
The one BIG problem that Brook has is he’s arguably facing the most talented fighter in the welterweight division in 2012 U.S Olympian Errol Spence Jr. next on May 20, and he is going to be a huge obstacle preventing him from realizing his vision. Brook was slathering on the compliments on Thurman in saying that he feels he’s above the other welterweights in the division.
Brook obviously wants the Thurman fight REAL bad, but he doesn’t need to smother Thurman with niceties for him to get that fight. All he needs to do is beat Spence because Thurman will likely jump at the chance of fighting Brook. I don’t know about whether Thurman would face Spence. I think that’s a much different story.
Thurman has seemed very reluctant to fight Spence in the past when the fight was offered to him. Just last week, Thurman said that he would like to fight the IBF champion in 2 years in a unification fight. Thurman didn’t mention Spence’s name, but you can argue that by saying that the fight would need to wait 2 years, he’s dropping a big hint that he sees Spence beating Brook.
“I want to fight Thurman because I want to unify the division before I move up,” said Brook to espn.com. “I think that would be a very explosive fight me and Keith Thurman. I spoke to him backstage before I fought Shan Porter and he said, ‘You’re the boy from England, I’m looking forward to seeing you fight.’ And I said the same to him because he stands out from all the rest of the welterweights for me.”
Brook looks like he’s getting carried away with his vision thing. Brook needs to keep his feet on the ground and look at his future in a more realistic manner. Let’s face it. Brook is going to be pretty much a big underdog when he steps foot inside the ring with Spence on May 20. Spence is like a sharper version of Gennady Golovkin. He’s just as big as Golovkin in terms of weight, and an even better body puncher in my opinion.
Golovkin is obviously better than Spence in his punch variety and nonstop punching style, but there’s very little to separate the two fighters. Spence is a wrecking machine just like Golovkin. That’s bad news for Brook because he just got taken apart literally by GGG last September.
Brook suffered a broken eye socket in the fight, and had to have surgery to fix the problem. Brook is now facing another Golovkin type of fighter in Spence, and I think it’s going to be really bad for him. It doesn’t matter that a horde of Brook’s boxing fans will be showing up to root him on when he faces Spence. I still see him losing that fight.
“I Don’t believe he’s fought anyone on my level yet and I’m looking forward to taking care of him in my own backyard,” said Brook about his next opponent Errol Spence Jr.
Spence hasn’t fought anyone at Brook’s level as a pro, but he fought much better fighters than him in the amateur ranks in my view. Brook has fought only one guy better than Spence at the pro level and that’s Golovkin. We saw what happened to Brook in that fight. We don’t know how Spence stacks up with Golovkin. He might be as good as him or better.
We’re going to see on May 20 if Spence can improve on the performance that Golovkin put in. I think he definitely can. I can see Spence knocking out Brook before the 5th round. The reason why is he’ll go after Brook’s body from round 1 rather than waiting until round 5 the way Golovkin did. Brook doesn’t seem to take body shots well at all. He can handle getting hit to the head much better, although there are limits to what Brook can take even with head shots.