By Scott Gilfoid: Kell ‘Special K’ has a case of nerves ahead of his fight this Saturday night on March 3 against the bruising slugger Sergey Rabchenko in their fight on Sky Sports at the Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, England. Brook (36-2, 25 KOs) knows fully that if he gets beaten by the 31-year-old Rabchenko (29-2, 22 KOs) in this fight, then it’s all over for him. He’ll never get the Amir Khan cash out fight to feather his retirement.
Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn has already made it clear. If Brook loses to Rabchenko, it’s game over for him. Brook is down to his last 3 to 5 fights in his career, and it might be less than that if he loses to Rabchenko. It’s Brook that wanted this fight. He turned down a slew of fighters offered to him by Hearn for his March 3rd fight. Brook isn’t saying the names of the fighters he rejected, but they must have incredibly soft fodder opposition for him to dismiss them for Rabchenko. But let’s not get things twisted though.
Rabchenko is not one of the fighters from the murderer’s row of the 154 lb. division. Rabchenko is a fringe contender, but one with heavy hands and this is his natural weight class. Brook is a fragile welterweight, who is fighting out of his weight class. Brook has lost his last 2 fights and he’s suffered eye injuries two separate eyes. It’s not a good situation for Brook to be in right now for him to be facing a fighter with power, even a fringe level guy like Rabchenko. If Rabchenko is able to take the fight into the later rounds, he’s got a real chance of breaking Brook down with his heavy shots. Brook’s stamina is terrible, and I doubt that it’ll be improved with him moving up to 154. He thinks it will be but I doubt it.
“I’ve got the butterflies and nerves just like it’s my first time getting in there,” said Brook to skysports.com. “I think that I need to feel like that though, those nerves are going to make me sharper because I know that there’s a lot at stake on Saturday.”
Well, if it doesn’t workout for Brook on Saturday night, then he at least will have tried. The eye injuries Brook has suffered in his last 2 fights are his bodies’ way of letting him know that it’s time to hang up the gloves. If Brook ignores what his body is telling him, he could keep suffering eye injuries into the future. That’s obviously not something that Brook needs. As such, if Brook gets injured against Rabchenko with another eye injury, it would be best that he retire from boxing rather than put himself through the ordeal of more surgeries.
It’s understandable for Brook to be nervous. If he loses this fight, he’s finished as a fighter for all intents and purposes. That’s the way it is though. Brook is fighting in the junior middleweight division, and he’s not going anywhere in this weight class unless Hearn is able to put a fight together against paper champion Sadam Ali. He’s the WBO 154lb. champion, who recently beat an over-the-hill Miguel Cotto. If Hearn can cut in front of Liam Smith to setup a Ali-Brook fight, then he has a good chance of winning the WBO junior middleweight title, because Ali doesn’t belong in the 154 lb. weight class. I’ll be surprised if the wily Hearn is able to setup the Ali fight for Brook. But it might not even get to that level, as Rabchenko is a formidable test for Brook. Rabchenko is not the type of guy one wants to face in their first fight at junior middleweight, especially when they’re coming off of consecutive eye injuries like Brook.