Brook: I knocked the stuffing out of Golovkin; I created the blueprint

Boxingnews24.com

By Allan Fox: Welterweight champion Kell Brook says he beating the stuffing out of Gennady Golovkin in their fight last year, and he created the blueprint in how to beat him. Brook thinks Daniel Jacobs followed his blueprint last Saturday night in their fight on HBO PPV at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Brook says be beat up Golovkin, and would have beat him if no for an eye injury he suffered that caused the fight to be stopped in round 5. According to Brook, Golovkin was wearing down in the 5th round at the time that the fight was stopped by his trainer Dominic Ingle.
Brook is facing Errol Spence in his next fight. We’ll see if he’s got the goods to hand the unbeaten Spence (21-0, 18 KOs) his first loss of his career. If Brook is good enough to beat Golovkin, then it should be easy for him to defeat Spence.

“I could tell during the fight that he was slowing down, and I think I was going to take over,” said Brook about Golovkin at Wednesday’s press conference. “I believe so,” Brook said in response to a question of whether he was going to beat Golovkin. “I learned a lot from that fight. I want ‘The Truth’s’ blood. No one has been going the distance with him [Golovkin], so I believe I knocked the stuffing out of him in that fight. I put the blueprint out there. I believe they [Jacobs] went in there thinking he’s not invincible, which of course is why they went the distance,” said Brook.

Brook has things backwards. The one that got the stuffing beaten out of him was himself. Golovkin broke Brook’s eye socket and was pounding him with really huge shots in round 5. The fight had become a massacre at that point. Brook was not winning and he was not going to win.
I saw the Golovkin-Brook fight a number of times, and the only thing I saw Brook do was land a few nice shots in round 2. Other than that round, Brook was running and taking hard shots each time he stopped.

Golovkin did not look he was tiring in round 5. On the contrary, he looked like he was working a punching bag and was going to be able to land his power shots on Brook for another 7 rounds if he had to. Of course, Brook fell apart physically in the 5th with him suffering a broken eye socket. Brook was staggering after his trainer Ingle threw in the towel to have the fight stopped. Golovkin was tired. Brook was the one that looked tired and very, very hurt. Brook looked like he wanted to quit from the 3rd round after he was dropped by Golovkin. Brook was knocked own, but the referee blew the call by not giving Golovkin credit for a clear knockdown.

“I think Jacobs won,” said WBC lightweight champion Mikey Garcia to Fighthype.com. “From what I saw, I thought Jacobs pulled it off. It was close, not one-sided. I thought Jacobs won, but it was a close fight. I wasn’t surprised; because I believe Jacobs has the style, technic, and the size to give Triple G a good run for his money. Jacobs is a solid 160 pounder, big. I wasn’t surprised. That’s what I expected from him. I always gave Jacobs a big chance, and he proved it. The fight was good enough to call for a rematch. If Triple G wants to clear that controversial decision win, he does a rematch. But if they want to go after another belt or fight someone because there’s more money in another fight, then that also influences there decision,” said Garcia.

I don’t agree with Mikey’s assessment of the Golovkin-Jacobs fight. I think Golovkin fought in a conservative manner that allowed the fight to be closer that it would have should have been. Golovkin seemed to get stuck with the original game plan that his trainer Abel Sanchez came up with for him. It was a game plan that was fine for the first 3 rounds, but Golovkin should have switched to his normal style of fighting in round 4 and stayed in that format in order to knock Jacobs out. When I saw Golovkin back off after dropping Jacobs in the 4th round, which told me that he was stuck mentally in the game plan that was given to him.

Golovkin needed to be able to adapt effortlessly on his own to his usual seek and destroy style of fighting so that he could have knocked out Jacobs. Golovkin would have been able to take the shots that Jacobs would have fired at him in order to finish the fight. Jacobs’ chin did not look sturdy at all. He was there to be knocked out if Golovkin had put together sustained combinations. His trainer Sanchez was not pushing him the way that a more aggressive trainer like Freddie Roach likely would have.

I think Golovkin would have destroyed Jacobs in 2 or 3 rounds if Roach was in his corner last Saturday. But the fight showed that Golovkin does not switch between game plans. He seems like when he’s given a game plan, he rigidly stays with it rather than thinking on his feet for changing circumstances in his fights.

“The level of competition changes,” said Mikey in talking about fighters facing better opposition. “You look spectacular when you’re fighting lesser competition. When you step up against a high level opponent, you can’t dominate as easily. Everything, the skill, the size, the weight, everything troubled Triple G. This was not a small guy he was fighting. Jacobs is a big 160. He might not have even cared about the IBF. All he cared about was winning the fight,” said Garcia about Jacobs choosing not to be weighed in by the IBF the day of the fight,” said Garcia.

I wasn’t impressed with what I saw from Jacobs in that fight. I thought he was there to be knocked out if Golovkin had thought with his head and went after the knockout. I believe that Jacobs is not as good as Mikey thinks he is. I see Jacobs getting knocked out if he ever faces David Lemieux or Jermall Charlo. However, I see Jacobs being protected in his next fight by being matched against a soft job. I doubt that Jacobs’ management will take any chances with him by putting him in with a good fighter. I think what they’ll do is have Jacobs burn through two or three easy opponents while they wait on a rematch with Golovkin. It’s risky though. If the rematch with Golovkin never happens, then Jacobs will have nothing to show for him burning through a handful of 2nd tier fighters.

To be honest, Jacobs has pretty much just fought weak opposition in the last 7 years. His only quality opponents were Golovkin and Peter Quillin. I don’t consider Sergio Mora to be quality. Jacobs wasted two fights on Mora. I think Jacobs will go back to face really bad opposition while he waits to see if he’s going to get the rematch with Golovkin. If he gets the rematch with him, he’ll lose that fight. But I see Jacobs losing by a knockout in the rematch, because Golovkin will want to make sure he can’t keep talking like he’s doing now about how he thinks he won. If Golovkin KOs Jacobs, it’ll take away his ability to say he won. Jacobs can certainly still say he won after he’s knocked out, but he’ll sound deluded.