By Scott Gilfoid: Kell Brook has been elevated to the #3 spot with the World Boxing Council at junior middleweight after inking with the sanctioning bodies’ ‘Clean Boxing’ anti-doping program with VADA. Despite having done little at 154, Brook is now ranked highly with the WBC. The only fight the often injured 32-year-old Brook (37-2, 26 KOs) has had at junior middleweight is his fight against Sergey Rabchenko last March. Brook stopped the over-matched Rabchenko in the 2nd round in Sheffield, England.
The WBC isn’t doing Brook any favors in ranking him at No.3 with the WBC, as it’s going to put a tremendous amount of pressure on him from the boxing public for him to challenge WBC junior middleweight champion Jermell Charlo, who has already offered him a fight. Brook and his promoter Eddie Hearn don’t seem eager to take the fight with Charlo for some reason. The only guy that Hearn is talking of wanting to match Brook against is Amir Khan.
Hearn wants to make that fight in December on Sky Box Office PPV. Hearn will likely put Brook and Khan in with each other at least twice if not three times depending on how much money the first fight makes. As far as Charlo goes, I don’t see Brook ever fighting him. The WBC is wasting it’s time ranking Brook highly with their organization because I don’t see him ever facing a wrecking machine like Charlo. We’ve already seen the type of fighters Hearn is interested in matching Brook against at junior middleweight.
Brook had previously been removed from the WBC’s rankings after failing to sign up for their ‘Clean Boxing’ program. Brook has fought just once in the past 12 months after suffering a broken eye socket in an 11th round knockout loss to Errol Spence Jr. on May 27, 2017. Before that fight, Brook suffered broken eye socket in his 5th round knockout at the hands of middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin in September 2016. Brook arguably quit against GGG in the 5th round when he chose to stop throwing punches when the Kazahstan fighter started to unload on him with heavy artillery. Once Brook’s trainer saw that he had given up, he threw in the towel to save him from being finished off. Given Brook’s inactivity and the low level of his opponent Rabchennko in his ONLY fight at 154, you can argue that he doesn’t deserve the number three ranking he WBC gave him. Brook would be better off ranked lower than
In other boxing news, former WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey ‘Krusher’ Kovalev has been moved to #4 with the WBC’s rankings at 175 after his 7th round knockout loss to Eleider ‘Storm’ Alvarez last Saturday night at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The big question is why the WBC chose to rank the 35-year-old Kovalev (32-3-1, 28 KOs) at #4 in their rankings after his bad three-knockdown stoppage loss against 34-year-old Alvarez (24-0, 12 KOs). I mean, it gives the appearance that Kovalev is being ranked due to his failure. Unless the WBC installs Kovalev at number one, he’ll be waiting a long, long time before he gets a title shot against WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson. Heck, even if Kovalev was ranked No1 with the WBC, he’d still likely wind up waiting years before he gets a crack at Stevenson’s title. Stevenson’s last defense against a mandatory challenger came was five years ago when he defeated Tony Bellew by a 6th round knockout in 2013. If Kovalev has to wait five years for a title shot, he’ll be 40-years-old. Obviously, Kovalev will likely be long retired by the time he’s 40, as he’s starting to look like a shot fighter with his losses to Eleider Alvarez and Andre Ward.
Tyson Fury has been moved by the WBC to No.5 in their heavyweight rankings after his 4th round stoppage win over tiny 5’9” former cruiserweight Sefer Serferi in his comeback fight on June 9. Fury had been out of the ring for 2 ½ years before that fight. Seferi isn’t a ranked contender, so it’s unclear why the WBC moved him up to number 5 after a nothing win over Seferi. You would think that Fury would need to beat a top contender in order to get a high ranking in the top five.
Former IBF super middleweight champion James ‘Chunky’ DeGale (24-2-1, 14 KOs) has been given a #6 ranking with the WBC a 168. This comes after the 32-year-old DeGale vacated his International Boxing Federation after the IBF ordered him to defend against mandatory Jose Uzcategui. DeGale wanted no part of facing Uzcategui, so he quickly gave up the IBF strap in order to go after the winner of the September 28 World Boxing Super Series final between WBA Super World super middleweight champion George Groves (28-3, 20 KOs) and Callum Smith (24-0, 17 KOs). As long as DeGale doesn’t need to take a fight against a quality operator before facing the winner of that fight, he should be alright. But if DeGale faces anyone halfway decent, he’s likely going to get royally thrashed, because he’s looking like he’s totally over-the-hill at this point in his career. It looks to some boxing fans that Badou Jack took the best out of DeGale in their fight in 2017, leaving him just a physical wreck.
In DeGale’s first fight back after his 12 round draw against Jack, he was beaten by bottom fringe contender Caleb Truax by a 12 round majority decision last December. That fight should have been a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision win for Truax, but one of the judges David Parris, scored it 114-114. In the Truax-DeGale rematch, DeGale won a controversial 12 round unanimous decision last April. DeGale looked just as bad as he had in the first fight. The only difference is DeGale motored around the ring for 12 rounds, and spent the entire fight running and holding. DeGale looked woefully bad. He was nothing like the fighter he’d been four year earlier when he was considered by many as the best fighter in the super middleweight division. At this point, it would be a stretch to say that DeGale is even the 10th best fighter at 168. I don’t know if there are too many fighters in the weight class that DeGale can beat without the generous scoring that we saw in his rematch with Truax. If DeGale gets scoring like that, then he can beat some of the top guys, but if the scoring is dead on correct, I can’t see him beating anyone in the top 15 at the present time.