Will “Special K” Brook duck Spence?

By Boxing News - 08/22/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten talent Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs) sent a strong message to IBF welterweight belt holder Kell “Special K” Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) with his devastating 6th round knockout victory over wily veteran Leonard Bundu (33-2-2, 12 KOs) last Sunday in their International Boxing Federation 147lb title eliminator bout.

The message that Spence sent to Brook with the victory was something along the lines of, ‘Are you sure you want to mess with this?’ I hate to say it, but I think Brook is going to decide that he wants no part of Spence, and he’ll quietly vacate his IBF welterweight title rather than come back down to the welterweight division to try and defend his strap.

With Brook moving up two divisions to face unbeaten IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin on September 10 next month, Brook has an excuse for why he doesn’t need to come back down to 147 to face Spence. Brook can always say that he’s too big now, and it’s just too hard for him to make weight at welterweight at this point in his career. This is what Spence’s promoter Lou Dibella expects for Brook to do. He doesn’t think Brook will even give it a college try to get back down to 147 to face Spence, because it’s just too hard and the fight is obviously way too dangerous.

It would potentially be a double whammy on Brook’s career if he loses to Golovkin by a knockout on 9/10 at the O2 Arena in London, England, and then he turns around and comes back down to 147 and meets a similar fat against the hard hitting Spence. A lot of boxing fans make a big fuss about Golovkin’s punching power, but what they don’t realize is that Spence has similar punching power in my opinion.

If you look at the uppercuts that Spence dropped the 41-year-old Bundu with in the 6th round last Sunday, those shots looked every bit as hard as anything Golovkin throws. The difference between Spence and Golovkin is that the Kazakhstan fighter is capable of throwing with murderous power with every shot he throws. He’s just naturally as strong as an ox. With Spence, he needs to load up on his punches to get the same kind of power as Golovkin. The end results are the same, but Golovkin is throwing more consistently hard punches than Spence. However, with Spence fighting in the welterweight division, his Golovkin-like power makes him dangerous for anyone in the division.

Brook has been blabbering about how he couldn’t get big fights at welterweight. Well, he’s now got more than a big fight against Spence if he wants it. I don’t think he does though. When push comes to shove, I see Brook vacating his IBF title, and quietly turning down the fight with Spence with his actions rather than his words. By Brook vacating his IBF title, you can read that action loud and clear as an admission that he doesn’t want any part of the 26-year-old American talent. Spence fought in the 2012 Olympics for the U.S, and he’s an amazing athlete.

Spence was beaten by Russia’s Andrey Zamkovoy 16-11 to get eliminated from the Olympics. Zamkovoy in turn was beaten by Serik Sapiyev in the finals of the 2012 Olympics. It would be very interesting to see how Spence does against Zamkovoy and Serik Sapiyev in the pro ranks.

Something tells me that they would be mowed down in the same way that Chris Algieri was by Spence. That kind of tells how the Olympic competition doesn’t really tell you who the better pro fighter is. It just tells you who the better three-round fighter is. If all fights were just three rounds in the pro ranks, we’d see different fighters holding belts from the current ones. It’s a whole different game.

It’s too bad that Spence had to fight to become Brook’s mandatory challenger in order to force the 30-year-old Brit to fight him. With Brook bellyaching about not having anyone to fight him, why in the heck didn’t he just fight Spence last year rather than wasting time fighting the likes of Frankie Gavin, Jo Jo Dan and Kevin Bizier

Earlier this year, Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn claimed the Spence’s management turned down a fight against Brook, something that Spence says never happened.

“I said to them [Spence’s management], ‘You want that right now?’”, said Hearn to Thaboxingvoice.com. “’Oh no, that one’s down the line.’ They’ll fight Ponomarev next, and then they’re the mandatory for Kell Brook, which is 75/36. We love that. But honestly, Kell Brook is ready to fight anyone. Everybody knows in boxing how good Kell Brook is,” said Hearn.

Spence says his management never turned down a fight against Brook, and he thinks that Hearn was just talking.

Spence never did fight Konstantin Ponomarev because the Russian fighter didn’t take the fight for whatever reason. Spence fought Bundu last Sunday in the IBF eliminator fight. But it’s now unclear whether Brook come back down to 147 to defend his IBF belt against Spence. After all that talking by Hearn, it now remains to be seen whether Brook will bother facing him after he fights Golovkin on September 10.

I think Brook is going to suffer his first loss of his career against Golovkin by knockout. It’s very unlikely that Brook will want to step into another hornets nest by facing Spence immediately after in his next fight, because that would be the equivalent of Brooking running through a gauntlet.

Brook has only faced one good opponent during his career in his fight against Shawn Porter, and that was a fight that was mired by the holding that Brook did all fight long in their 2014 bout. Golovkin will be Brook’s second quality opponent of his 12-year pro career. If Brook decides to go back to his tired playbook of choosing to hold all night long to try and squeak out a controversial points decision against the Kazakhstan fighter, I suspect he’s going to get knocked silly by Golovkin in close. Golovkin will have no doubt been working on his power shots to throw in close if Brook decides to grab him for a clinch 10+ times per round like we saw in his fight against Porter. Golovkin won’t play that. He believes in actual fighting and he’s not going to let Brook grapple with him to stall out the fight.