By Allan Fox: Former welterweight champion Kell Brook says WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders (25-0, 12 KOS) has the style, ring IQ and the talent to beat IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) in the near future if he gets past David Lemieux (38-3, 33 KOs) tonight in their fight in Laval, Quebec, Canada.
A victory for Saunders over Lemieux will place him in against the winner of the Golovkin vs. Saul Canelo Alvarez bout next May.
What makes it appear unlikely that Saunders could beat Golovkin is the way he looked in his last 3 fights against Willie Monroe Jr., Artur Akavov and Andy Lee. Saunders didn’t fight to the level that you’d like to see from a fighter that supposedly could beat Golovkin.
To be taken seriously as a fighter that could hand Golovkin his first pro career defeat, Saunders would need to beat those fighters easily. Saunders did defeat all 3 of them, but the wins didn’t look easy for him over Lee and Akavov. Even the Monroe Jr. wasn’t a great one for Saunders.
“He’s the right opponent to beat Triple G, because he’s a southpaw, he’s awkward and he’s very smart,” said Brook to IFL TV. “He’s a very talented fighter. His ring craft is very good. I don’t know if I’d fancy him to win. Golovkin is a very good fighter. He knows how to cut the ring down, and he punches very hard. He goes out there and gets the job done. He’s give him problems definitely,” said Brook about Saunders.
Tonight will tell us a lot about how well Saunders will do against a fighter of Golovkin’s class. If Saunders beats Lemieux easily and does a better job than Golovkin did in his win over the Canadian fighter in 2015, then you can say that he might have the talent to beat Triple G. Right now, it’s not too likely that he would beat him.
Brook, 31, is coming back from back to back defeats to face Sergey Rabchenko (29-2, 22 KOs) on March 3 at the Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, England. Brook lost to Errol Spence Jr. last May and Golovkin last year in September. Those were both stoppage defeats for Brook in which he suffered eye injuries in the form of broken eye sockets. Brook will move to 154 for his fight with Rabchenko. That’s a move that Brook is being second-guessed about by a lot of boxing fans. They wonder what he’s thinking in going up against bigger punchers that could lead to further eye problems for him.