Former IBF/WBA/WBC featherweight champion Naseem Hamed believes that the unbeaten welterweight Kell Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) can pull off an upset this Saturday night against IBF/IBO/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) if he boxes him clever, uses his jab and avoids getting hit by his big shots. Hamed, 42, believes that Brook can get the job done on Saturday night in their fight at the O2 Arena in London, England.
I’m not sure that too many other boxing fans would agree with Hamed, because Brook is largely seen as the sacrificial lamb despite all the stuff that he and his fans are spouting. Brook will probably talk his way right up to the moment of the fight, and I don’t think it’s going to change the reality of the situation. Brook will probably still be talking after the fight when he tries to figure out what happened.
When fantasy bumps up against reality, it’s fantasy that loses out each time. That means that Brook’s pipe dream of him beating Golovkin will be a casualty this Saturday night when reality tears that dream apart. It’s okay to dream, but don’t let your trips get to you, as they say.
“I think Brook can box a very clever fight and use straight shots to get the victory,” said Hamed to skysports.com. “He needs to watch Sugar Ray Leonard against Marvin Hagler because that fight is the key to him winning this one. GGG is a great fighter but he hasn’t got the ability that Kell has – Brook is the far superior boxer.”
Who is Hamed kidding? Brook would be wasting his time if he sat and watched the Hagler vs. Leonard fight from 1987, because he’s nothing like Leonard and Golovkin is nothing like Hagler. These are different people. You can’t predict the future by living in the past. It would be nice if you could predict every fight’s outcome by sitting and watching the Hagler-Leonard fight and then assuming that the fights will play out just like that one did. That doesn’t work like that. Brook and Golovkin are different people, and whatever happens on Saturday will be a different situation than the one that played out in the past with Leonard vs. Hagler. I think it would hurt Brook if he foolishly followed Hamed’s advice in watching the Leonard-Hagler fight, because he might actually think his match with Golovkin would play out the same way. It’ll be a real disappointment for Brook when Golovkin doesn’t fight poorly like Hagler.
Golovkin won’t have problems cutting off the ring like Hagler did in that fight. Hagler never was good at cutting off the ring in my view, and that’s why he lost to Leonard. If he had been on top of him for the entire fight, he would have knocked him out. I have no doubts that if you could take Golovkin and put him into a time capsule to go back to 1987 to fight Leonard, he would have knocked him out easily in that fight, because he would have cut off the ring and taken Leonard out with body shots. Hagler was head hunting the entire fight, which was a bad mistake.
I don’t think it matters whether Brook chooses to use his boxing skills and stay on the outside or if he chooses to mix it up in a street fight with Golovkin in this fight. Brook is going to be in dire straits from the moment the bell sounds in round one. Golovkin is going to cut off the ring, nail Brook with head and body shots, and knock him out in that order.
I don’t thinking Brook fighting in a clever manner is going to change the outcome of this fight. First of all, Brook moves like he’s got ankle weighs on both legs. He doesn’t move well. Let’s get that out in the open. Secondly, Brook is not fast of hand and he’s not a huge puncher either. Brook throws punches in a mechanical manner. It looks like someone painting by the numbers system. He does not look fluid or graceful in throwing shots. Further, Brook’s arms are short. If you look at Brook’s arms, they appear short for his torso. I don’t think Brook has alligator arms, but he definitely has short arms and he’s giving away at least a couple of inches in the reach department to Triple G. That’s obviously not good.
If Golovkin’s shots are going to be getting there first due to his longer reach, then Brook is going to be in trouble early in the fight in round one. That’s when I suspect that Golovkin will clobber him with something big that will have him badly buzzed. It’ll be up to Golovkin to decide whether he wants to KO Brook immediately or not. He could look to knock him out straightway or let it be a prolonged beating so that the boxing fans can be entertained at the O2 Arena in London. Personally, I think Golovkin will look to finish Brook off once he has him hurt.
Golovkin is like a great white shark. Once he smells blood in the water, his instincts taker over and he goes for the kill so to speak. Whether Golovkin wants to or not, his instincts will lead him to finish Brook early in the 1st round. I’m sure that if Golovkin could consciously think for a second before knocking him out, he would hold back and let the moment pass to allow Brook to survive the round. I just don’t think the moment will play out like that. Golovkin will hurt Brook, and then finish him quickly in front of a shocked crowd at the O2.
“He [Brook] needs to avoid a lot of it and slow down the fight with his brilliant jab,” said Hamed. “Kell can be the biggest superstar in boxing and the best British fighter ever if he can overcome Golovkin. I’m willing him on to win so much and he just needs to realize that he has the ability and skill to get the job done.”
So Hamed wants Brook to slow down the fight against Golovkin, eh? I have a feeling that Plan-A for Brook is exactly that kind of a fight approach. In other words, I think Brook will try and slow the fight down, but not with his jab necessarily. I think Brook will resort to clinching to slow the fight down like he did against Shawn Porter. I think Brook will hope that if he can clinch for 2 minutes of every round, he can get the better of Golovkin in the one minute whether there’s no clinching on his part. Of course, that kind of excessive clinching style by Brook only works in the absence of a referee doing his job.
If Brook is able to hold at will, what’s to stop Golovkin from choosing to bend the rules too by fouling as he pleases, thinking that the referee is just hanging around with a Laissez-faire approach to controlling the fouling in the contest. You would hope that a referee wouldn’t want to be useless in the ring by standing and watching fouls all night long, but you never know. I just hope that Brook doesn’t choose to slow the fight down again by holding all night long like he did against Shawn Porter in 2014, because that was really boring to watch. It wasn’t even fighting on Brook’s part. It was just holding as far as I’m concerned.