Kell Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) did a good job of hanging tough with Gennady “GGG” Golovkin four a portion of their fight on September 10, but he wound up suffering an eye injury that forced the stoppage in the 5th. For all we know, Brook might be ruined goods from the Golovkin fight.
It wouldn’t be the first time that a top notch fighter was ruined by a huge slugger. If Brook falls apart in his first fight coming off his eye surgery, then you have to assume that he wasn’t able to return to the fighter he was before the injury.
Brook, 30, had surgery last Friday to repair a broken eye socket in his right eye. He’s supposed to be coming back from the injury in early 2017 to go after big fights against the likes of Amir Khan, Miguel Cotto and Saul Canelo Alvarez. However, there are major questions about whether Brook’s eye will be able to hold up under the pounding he’s going to be receiving when he gets back in there to resume his boxing career.
Right now, Brook’s profile is high because he hung tough against Golovkin for four rounds. I believe that Brook could have had it out of the 5th round if his trainer Dominic Ingle hadn’t thrown in the towel to stop the fight. What’s interesting is that by merely being competitive with Golovkin, Brook has a chance to fight the same guys as he would have if he’d beaten him. Brook has a chance to fight Khan, Canelo and Cotto now despite him being stopped in the 5th round. I’m not sure that Brook deserves to be fighting those guys, because at the end of the day, he was still beaten. It doesn’t matter. Those guys are going to want to fight him because they saw that he’s not a big puncher, and they can be lumped into the same category as Golovkin if they beat Brook too. They might even surpass Golovkin if they beat Brook easier than he did. But here’s the thing. We don’t know how well Brook’s eye is going to handle him taking big left hooks from Khan, Cotto or Canelo. You suffer an injury like the one that Brook suffered, it’s a serious injury. When Brook starts getting hit on that eye again, you never know if his eye will stay together or not. Further, Brook might be mentally uncomfortable taking shots to the eye, because he just went through surgery on the eye. It was delicate surgery.
Brook has pretty much made up his mind that he’s going to be moving up to 154. His promoter Eddie Hearn said that the only way he can see Brook moving back down to 147 is if a fight against Khan presents itself. If not, then Brook will be moving to 154. The thing with Brook moving to junior middleweight is that he’s all of a sudden going to be fighting guys with a ton of power like Cotto and Canelo. Those are big punchers. They might not as hard as Golovkin, but they might not need to. They’ll still be much harder punchers than anything Brook experienced when he was fighting at 147. The only hard puncher Brook fought at welterweight was Shawn Porter, and he held him all night long for 12 rounds. Brook didn’t let Porter get his shots off by choosing to hold him frequently.
Brook’s trainer Dominic Ingle saved him in more than one way by stopping the fight in the 5th round against Triple G. If Ingle had just let the fight continue, Golovkin would have taken Brook out either in the 5th or 6th round. It would have looked bad for Brook with him taking a pounding and winding up on the canvas or having the referee halt the fight. Ingle didn’t even wait for Brook to really start getting pounded by Golovkin before he threw in the towel. That helped Brook as well, because it saved him from looking bad in front of the many boxing fans that saw the fight. Brook was posturing at the time of the stoppage by holding out his hands at taunting Golovkin, as if to say, ‘See, you can’t hurt me no matter how hard you try.’ The reality is that Brook was getting hurt with each shot Golovkin threw, and he wasn’t going to be able to take many more of those shots without going down or having the referee step in to save him. Brook wasn’t throwing much of anything back in the final seconds of the fight. There was still a minute left in the 5th round, and that’s a lot of time for Golovkin to throw punches. Something would have had to give. Either Brook would have needed to start throwing punches again, which was unlikely to happen, or Golovkin was going to take the fight to the logical conclusion by dropping Brook with a big shot. But by Ingle stopping the fight by throwing in the towel, Brook was spared the indignity of being knocked out clinically in front of all the fans. He was able to taunt Golovkin and be saved by Ingle with him throwing the towel in. Brook then was able to tell the boxing media after the fight that he would have beaten Golovkin if not for the injury. Brook blamed his loss on the eye injury rather than giving Golovkin any credit for him injured him and worked him over to the point where he needed to be saved by Ingle. So in the end, Brook ended up looking better than he otherwise would have if Ingle hadn’t saved him.
There’s a very high chance that Brook’s career is going to fizzle out quickly once he starts fighting the best junior middleweights in the 154lb division. Based on how Brook looked against Golovkin, I don’t think he’ll do well against Caenlo or Cotto. Brook doesn’t hit hard enough, and he moves too much. He’s not going to beat Canelo or Cotto by throwing pot shots like he was doing against Golovkin. Brook fought like he had leg strength under him. Everything was throwing with his upper body. There was no foundation for Brook when he was throwing shots. It’s going to be tough for Brook when he starts facing the best 154lb fighters like Cotto, Canelo, Jermall Charlo, Julian Williams, Jermell Charlo, Demetrius Andrade and Erislandy Lara. If all Brook is going to do is fight Liam Smith, Canelo or Cotto to get a cash out fight, then he’ll be fine, because he can then end up his career after losing to them. But if Brook honestly thinks he’s going to accomplish something in the junior middleweight division, then I think he’s fooling himself.
I don’t see Brook being able to hang the best fighters at 154. We could see Brook get beaten a couple of times, and then making the decision to move back down to 147 to try and make something happen in that division once again. It would be similar to how former WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly moved up to cruiserweight to try and find success in that weight class, but then he moved back down quickly as soon as he tasted defeat for the first time at cruiserweight. I think it’s quite possible that Brook will move back down to 147, especially if he gets beaten a couple of times. Brook will likely use the weight as an excuse for his loss by saying he’s not a true junior middleweight despite the fact that he’s rehydrating close to 170 after making the 147lb limit.