Former two division world champion Ricky Hatton says IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin is on the verge of facing his toughest test of his 10-year pro career this Saturday night on September 10 against Britain’s Kell Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) at the O2 Arena in London, England.
Hatton isn’t ruling out a victory for Brook in this fight, but he understands that it’s going to be awfully difficult for him to do that given how hard Golovkin punches. However, Hatton brings up the example of his own win over then 35-year-old Kostya Tszyu in 2005 as a case that Brook could pull off the upset.
There are some differences though between what Hatton accomplished and what Brook is trying to do against Triple G. Tszyu was at the end of his career at the time he fought Hatton. Tszyu had injury problems, inactivity issues, and he had to lose a lot of weight to get down to the 140lb limit.
Hatton then used a lot of wrestling on the inside the entire fight to tire Tszyu out. Hatton didn’t fight Tszyu in a traditional fight. It was mostly wrestling from Hatton. Any time there was separation between the two fighters, Tszyu was the one landing the heavy shots. It’s hard to see Hatton beating Tszyu in the prime of his career if the fight had taken place then.
“It’s Golovkin’s toughest fight,” said Hatton to skysports.com. “Golovkin fought some good men, and that’s how high I hold Kell Brook as a fighter. I think it will be his toughest test. It is a massive, massive, massive ask. I think you’ve got one of the best middleweights there’s probably been. The fact that he’s going up two weights is a big, big ask, but I think Kell will give him his toughest fight,” said Hatton.
It’s really hard to speculate whether Brook will give Golovkin his toughest test or not, because we haven’t seen him up against another middleweight before. We haven’t even seen Brook fight more than one good welterweight during his career. Let’s be real about this. Who else besides Shawn Porter has Brook fought during his career?
If you say that Brook has fought some fine fighter Matthew Hatton, Jo Jo Dan, Carson Jones and Kevin Bizier, I don’t think you can take those guys as top level opponents. Brook barely beat Porter, and he had to hold him all night to do it.
So if Porter is the best that Brook has fought, then you have to conclude that he’s going to lose and lose badly to Golovkin. Porter was getting the better of Brook when he wasn’t being held. Porter looked like the better fighter of the two. The only thing that kept him from proving he was the better fighter was all the holding that Brook did.
I can’t say that Brook will do a better job against Golovkin than Kassim Ouma did in 2011, because Brook doesn’t have that kind of size and talent. Ouma was a very good fighter, and he gave Golovkin fits in their fight. This was before Golovkin had adopted his inside fighting skills that he has today. Golovkin was mostly just a head hunter back in 2011.
If they had fought each other in 2011, I think Golovkin would beat Ouma fairly easy. But I can’t say that Brook is going to do a better job against Golovkin than Ouma, because he doesn’t have the size, experience or the talent to trouble him. Brook also doesn’t have the punching power for a middleweight. That much was apparent when we saw Brook spar with Liam Smith recently. Smith was by far the sharper puncher of the two. It wasn’t even close.
“Nobody thought I could beat Kostya Tszyu and I did, so you can’t say it’s an impossibility and Kell’s not going to win,” said Hatton. “But I think we’ve got to fear the worst, because he is a punching machine, and he looks very, very heavy handed. Golovkin is the favorite at the end of the day, but it’s not beyond the realms of impossibility,” said Hatton.
Brook has a chance, but it’s not a good one. He could use his boxing skills to maybe stay on the outside, jab and move for 12 rounds. The problem is that Golovkin is so good at cutting off the ring on his opponents. This is going to make it easy for him to trap Brook and force him into brawling with him.
In looking at Brook’s public workout on Tuesday, he was using a lot of shifty movement to show how he’s going to avoid getting hit by Golovkin. I just don’t think it’s going to work in keeping him from getting hit to the body. Brook’s head moved a lot, but his body is still there for Golovkin to pound with stabbing punches to take his movement away. Once Brook can no longer move, he’ll be a sitting duck.
Golovkin doesn’t gain much from this fight other than a payday. It won’t be big news if/when he destroyed Brook, because he’s facing a welterweight and not a middleweight.
