Former two-time world title challenger Paul Smith thinks Kell Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) has a real challenge on his hands in his fight on Saturday, September 10 against the naturally bigger middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs).
Smith likes Brook a lot as a fighter, but he doesn’t know if he can handle the big punches from Golovkin.
Smith says that if Golovkin were the one moving up two divisions to face Brook instead of the other way around, it would be closer fight potentially. But with Brook having to move up two divisions to take on the hardest puncher in the 160lb division in Golovkin, he doesn’t know if Brook can accomplish that task.
“The fact that he is moving up to middleweight to challenge someone like Golovkin, who is absolutely frightening, feared, avoided and probably the most dangerous fighter in the world, probably out of him and [Sergey] Kovalev at the minute, so it is a massive ask for Kell Brook,” said Smith to skysports.com.
Moving up in weight is part of the problem that Brook has going for him in this fight. The other issues that Brook has are his lack of experience fighting middleweights. He’s never done that before, and he’s picking the toughest fighter in the division in Golovkin. You don’t like to see fighters moving up two divisions to immediately challenge the best fighter in that division without getting your feet wet against other fighters in that weight class.
Brook is going about it the wrong way. To be sure, he might be able to hold his own against GGG and shock the world, but it’s highly unlikely. The other problem that Brook has is all the weight that he’s put on. He’s bulked up too much for this fight, and he appears slower now, easier to hit, and not any more powerful than he was before he bulked up. Brook’s heart will have to work harder to pump blood to his bigger body.
It’s going to be harder for Brook to move when he gets tired, and he’s already slower. Brook isn’t punching harder, and that’s going to be a major issue for him, because he’ll need a lot of power to try and keep Golovkin off of him.
“Everyone that speaks about Golovkin, he is known all around the world for it, he is a destroyer, basically, and Kell has to stay away from him, ‘I’ll box him and try confuse him and pick him off and make Golovkin miss’ for 12 rounds,” said Smith. “I don’t think there is a middleweight/super-middleweight out there who could stop Golovkin in his tracks, he is so strong.”
Brook doesn’t have the ability to box, confuse, make GGG miss, or to stay away from him. We saw how easily Liam Smith was able to cut off the ring on Brook to stay close enough to hit him repeatedly in their sparring session on Youtube. We obviously know that it was sparring, but the fact of the matter is, Brook couldn’t keep Smith off of him. He was always on top of him.
I don’t think Brook has ever really adopted an evasive style of fighting before in his career as welterweight. Brook never had to. He was always the bigger, stronger and more talented fighter compared to his mostly mediocre opponents.
The only guy that Brook has had trouble with during his career was Shawn Porter. Brook was able to tie him up repeatedly over 12 rounds to keep him from getting his shots off. However, Brook wasn’t being evasive in that fight by staying out of range of Porter. He was always in range. Brook was able to hold enough to keep Porter from throwing punches. That’s not going to happen in the Golovkin fight because he’s not going to let Brook move, and he can’t tie him up because Golovkin is too smart for that. He steps backwards when his opponents try and tie him up. He then fires a hard shot at the same time to catch his opponents when they’re vulnerable in reaching out for him to clinch. Brook can’t afford to get nailed with a hard head shot while his arms are outstretched looking to hold Golovkin.
“He looks like a natural middleweight but the fact is he is not a natural middleweight,” said Smith about Brook.
If there were any questions about whether Brook was a legitimate middleweight now, I think it was answered with the sparring we saw between him and WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith, the brother of Paul Smith. Brook didn’t even punch as well as Smith. If he can’t even hit as hard as a 154lb fighter, then what does that tell you about his chances against a 160lb fighter like Golovkin? Brook is going to need to try and spoil all night long against Golovkin by running and holding if he’s to have any chance of surviving. He won’t win the fight by spoiling, but at least the can avoid getting knocked out.
