Brook looking past Spence, wants Golovkin rematch

Boxingnews24.com

By Scott Gilfoid: You would think that with IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook facing arguably the most talented fighter in the 147 pound division in Errol Spence next, he would be worried about winning that fight, but Brook is now saying he wants to fight a rematch with middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs). Brook and Spence face each other on May 27 at Bramall Lane in Sheffield, England. Spence is chomping at the bit, eager to get in there and smash Brook apart in front of his own fans. The crowd is expected to be at least 30,000 fans on the night.

Spence is considered the favorite against Brook in the minds of a lot of boxing fans. Why Brook would be yapping about wanting to fight Golovkin again at this point in time sounds to me sounds delusional. It doesn’t make sense at all. Some fans think Brook is about to take another Golovkin-esque type beating from the ultra-talented Spence, and yet here Kell is blabbering about wanting to fight GGG again. I don’t begin to understand Brook’s thinking process.

I just hope that Golovkin didn’t shake something loose in Brook’s thought processes with his 5th round knockout win over him last September. Brook needs to be thinking about Spence instead of another fight with Golovkin, don’t you think? Brook already had his chance against Golovkin and he failed miserably. It wasn’t a competitive enough fight for Brook to be talking about wanting a rematch. There’s no upside for Golovkin to fight Brook again. If all Golovkin is going to do with the remainder of his career is to give rematches to all the guys that he knocked out in the past, he wouldn’t have a great legacy. Brook had his chance and he royally blew it.

Brook is talking about potentially fighting Golovkin after he moves up to the junior middleweight division and gets a couple of fights under his belt in that weight class. Just how soon Brook would be moving up to 154 is unknown. Golovkin isn’t going to wait around for the next 5 years for Brook to eventually move up to 154 after he leaves the 147 pound weight class. The fight would need to take place soon for it to make any sense. The fight would also depend on how successful Brook is after he moves up to junior middleweight.

If Brook moves up to 154 and beats a couple of bottom feeders ranked at the very bottom of the division, then it won’t be worth it for GGG to fight him again. Personally, the only way it’s worthwhile for Golovkin to fight Brook a second time is if he moves up to 154 and proves that he can best the likes of Jermell Charlo, Demetrius Andrade, Erislandy Lara and Erickson Lubin.

That’s where Brook’s problems lie. I don’t think Brook can beat any of those guys; not now at least. Maybe if Brook improves in the future, he could beat some or all of those fighters, but I highly doubt it. Brook is 30-years-old now. The time for improvement has already come and gone with his boxing career. If you toss Brook in with the likes of Lara, Charlo, Andrade and Lubin, I see it ending badly for him.

Boxing fans might remember how Triple G calmly took Brook apart piece by piece last September, disassembling him like a robot in front of Brook’s own British fans at the O2 Arena in London, England. There was nothing left of Brook by the 5th round other than a beat up shell, leaning against the ropes and being shaken apart by Golovkin each thunderous head shot that he landed. It was so bad that Brook’s own trainer Dominic Ingle had to throw in the towel to save him from being knocked out. After the fight was stopped, a badly hurt Brook staggered to his corner, looking punch drunk from the punishment he’d just absorbed in the 5th. Brook ended up with a broken right eye socket from one of Golovkin’s huge punches he’d landed in the fight. It’s thought that the eye injury may have occurred in round 1 when Golovkin staggered Brook with a big left hook that connected right on his right eye.

“I would probably like to fight the weight above welterweight and maybe two fights, and then fight him. Instead of the big step up in class and higher weight division,” said Brook to skysports.com. “But I would love one day to get back in there with ‘GGG’ and have another tear up with him.”

Oh my, it sounds like Brook is having pipe dream in talking about fighting Golovkin again in the future. Yeah, I bet Golovkin has nothing better to do than to throw Brook another bone to give him a second chance at getting knocked out. I hate to say I but I think Brook is completely dreaming at this point. Golovkin, 35, has bigger and better things to do with his boxing career than to slam his career in reverse and go backwards to give Brook a second chance.

It doesn’t work like that in this sport. When you destroy an opponent to the point where their trainer has to throw in the white towel of surrender to save them, you move on. You don’t get stuck fighting that guy again and again just because he says he wants a second or third shot. I don’t think for a second that Golovkin and his promoter Tom Loeffler would entertain a second fight with Brook. As we saw last September, Golovkin was in a no-win situation by fighting a welterweight like Brook.

No matter what Golovkin did, he wasn’t going to get credit for smashing Brook. If Golovkin had knocked Brook out in the 1st round, which he came close to doing by the way, the boxing fans would have likely said, ‘So what, you beat a welterweight.’ If Golovkin had to struggle to beat Brook, then fans would have ripped him apart for that. Further, if Golovkin had lost to Brook, then his career would have been over for all intents and purposes.

There was nothing at all that Golovkin could gain from fighting Brook other than getting noticed by the British boxing public and a decent payday. Fighting Brook again would be the same thing, even if he moves up to junior middleweight. Boxing fans would still see Brook as the smaller fighter than Golovkin. Brook would be viewed as a pumped up welterweight, and there’s no way that Golovkin could get credit for beating him.

Let’s be brutally honest about Brook and his pipe dream of fighting Golovkin again. Any chances of Brook fighting GGG a second time will be DESTROYED and washed away after he gets beaten by Spence on May 27 in their fight at Bramall Lane in Sheffield, England. When/if Spence obliterates Brook, it’ll be academic at that point that there will never be a rematch between Brook and Golovkin. Any chances of a second Brook-Golovkin fight would be out the window once Spence stops Brook.

Golovkin isn’t going to say, ‘Gee, Brook just got destroyed by Spence. I think I’ll go fight Brook again now and be a good one.’ I’m sure Golovkin will have sympathy for Brook, but I doubt he’ll have enough to want to give him a rematch for old time’s sake. I mean, this isn’t a rivalry like Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier. Their first two fights were competitive match-ups. We didn’t see a truly competitive fight between Golovkin and Brook last September in their fight at the O2 Arena in London. We saw Brook fight well in just the 2nd round. The rest of the fight, Brook was running from Golovkin. By the end of round 3, Brook was in full retreat mode and done for the night. Brook was no longer even going through the motions of showing the boxing fans that he was there to win. Brook was running. If Brook was a fort and Golovkin an invading army, I believe that the white flag of surrender would have been hoisted up on the flagpole by Brook after the 3rd, because he was done and no longer even trying to fight back. All I saw from Brook was running from the 4th until the bitter end in the 5th.

If Brook loses to Spence on May 27, then I think he’s going to need to hit the reset button on his career and start from scratch at 154. It would probably be better for Brook to stay at 147 if he can continue to make weight for the division without draining himself. I don’t see a future right now for Brook at 154 while talents like Charlo, Andrade, Lara and Lubin are still there. The good news is that some or even all of those guys may move up to 160 one of these days. I don’t see that happening anytime soon though. That’s why it would be better for Brook to remain at 147 and go after someone like Manny Pacquiao or Keith Thurman. Brook might have the talent to beat one of those two. I doubt that Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum will let his fighter face Brook though, but you never know. Maybe it could happen if Brook gives him some options for a few fights under his promotional banner? But it’s still doubtful though because I think Arum is only interesting in matching Pacquiao against fighters from his own Top Rank stable for the remainder of his career.