Brook says Spence fight would have been different if not for eye injury

Boxingnews24.com

By Scott Gilfoid: Kell Brook believes his fight with Errol Spence Jr. would have gone a lot differently if not for an eye injury that he sustained in the second half of the fight last weekend in England. Brook believes that the fight would have had a different result. Of course, this is the same thing that Brook said after his 5th round knockout loss to Gennady “GGG” Golovkin last year, so it’s kind of hard to hear the same thing from the “Special One” and not see it as more excuse-making from the 31-year-old fighter.

I was hoping Brook wouldn’t start with the excuse-making after the Spence fight, as we’d see him play that card after his loss to GGG. It wasn’t interesting to see Brook not giving Golovkin credit for beating, and it was even worse for him to not give Spence credit either. By blaming both loses on his eye injuries instead of him having lost to the better fighters, it’s made Brook look like a poor loser instead of someone taking the high road in praising his talented conquers.

Spence took the baton from Brook last Saturday night in snatching his IBF welterweight title. You would have liked to have seen Brook pour praise over the head of Spence to let the boxing world know that he’s the next star in the division and the new kid on the block. That didn’t happen though. Instead of Brook smothering Spence with compliments from head to toe, he used the old eye injury excuse that he’d used in his previous fight against Triple G.

Brook suffered a broken left eye socket in the 7h or 8th round last Saturday night in battling Spence at Bramall Lane in Sheffield, England. Brook wasn’t doing very well from the 5th round, as Spence had come alive and was blasting Brook to the body with both hands. Spence looked like an entirely different animal from the 5th round compared to the fighter he’d been in the first 4 rounds.

Brook was completely lost out there once Spence shifted gears from 1st to 2nd. You could see how totally overwhelmed Brook was, as the only thing he could do was scurry to the corner and hold on to keep Spence from throwing punches. The fight quickly became a rout from round 5 on, and that was well BEFORE Brook had suffered the eye injury.

“If the eye hadn’t have gone I think the fight would have mapped out a little bit differently but it is what it is and I didn’t get the win,” said Brook to skysports.com.

I’m sorry, Brook, but I don’t believe for a second that the fight with Spence would have had any other outcome than the one that it did last Saturday night. Even if you hadn’t been injured, weight drained or whatever, your destiny was to taste defeat. I don’t know if you would have taken a couple of knees, but I think you would have been on the canvas at some point. Spence was the better fighter on the night.

I think you would have taken a knee regardless of the eye injury. The fight had already gotten out hand by the final seconds of the 5th round. You looked like a defeated arm in the final seconds of that round, as Spence overran your position and was cruising to victory. The invading arm was too strong for you, Brook. You were trapped and outnumbered.

Brook and his promoter Eddie Hearn want to move to 154 now to try and get a chance of luck. That implies that Brook lost to Spence because of not only the eye but also because of the weight. That’s not how I see it. Brook’s weight was fine. He looked the same for thuis fight as he had in most of the fights in his 13-year pro career. The difference was that Brook was fighting much weaker guys like Hector Saldivia, Matthew Hatton, Michael Jennings, Philip Kotey, Rafal Jackiewicz, Luis Galarza, Carson Jones, Alvaro Robles, Jo Jo Dan, Kevin Bizier, Frankie Gavin, Lovemore Ndou and Krzystof Biernas.

I’m betting that if Brook went back to fighting those guys at 147, he’d be looking like the same guy he’d been looking when he was unbeaten and smashing everybody in sight. The difference is that Brook is not fighting those guys last Saturday night. Brook was fighting Spence, the guy that many in the boxing world now see as the replacement for Floyd Mayweather Jr. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that Brook was never going to be able to beat a fighter like Spence last Saturday night. The reason why is Brook wasn’t facing the same weaker fodder that he’d padded his record with through most of his career. That was the basic problem.

Brook’s promoters did a great job of building him up to make him look better than he actually was by feeding him 2nd tier easy marks for most of career. The problem is that you can’t keep your fighter at that level forever. Sooner or later, they have to start fighting TRUE world class talents, not the guys with inflated rankings, who don’t deserve to be ranked in the top 15. You can argue that past Brook opponents like Bizier, Jo Jo Dan and Gavin didn’t deserve to be rated in the top 15. None of them are ranked in the top 15 now, and Brook fought them all just recently.

It shows you how quickly things can change in boxing. It’s not that Bizier, Dan and Gavin have deteriorated since their losses to Brook. It’s more of a case of the International Boxing Federation upgrading their rankings. But like I said, if Brook went back to fighting the guys that he’d padded his record with throughout his career, he’d be looking just as good as he used to. But he can’t go back to fighting those guys because more is expected of him now. The boxing public wants to see Brook fight better guys now instead of all the fighters that he was inflating his record with.

“When I got caught in the 11th it (his eye) wouldn’t come back into line. It actually stayed there and it was coming on strong and I knew that I couldn’t see and I knew he is a very sharp shooter – a very good fighter, Errol Spence Jr, and I knew that it could be fatal with some of the shots he was chucking,” said Brook.

Well, it’s good that Brook decided to do the right thing by staying down for the full count in the 11th round after he took a knee to escape the punishment from Spence. I would have liked to have seen Book’s corner man Dominic Ingle to throw in the white towel once again to have the fight stopped. Brook says he knew that his left eye was a problem for him by the 7th round, and that he couldn’t see well out of it.

Why in the heck didn’t Ingle stop the fight? Didn’t Brook let his trainer Ingle know about the condition of his eye? If not, then why didn’t he do it? Ingle should have reverted to form and tossed on the white towel in the 9th round when it was so obvious that Brook was taking a royal beating from Spence. That would have been the time for Ingle to toss the towel in. Round 10 was another missed opportunity to have the fight stopped after Brook took a knee to get out of the way of the avalanche of punches that was coming from Spence.

The fight was no longer even entertaining to watch by that point, as Spence was just beating the stuffing out of Brook. There was no coming back for Brook. You could see it in his eyes. He was finished and he seemed to know it. All the spoiling stuff that Brook had done in the first 4 rounds was no longer working for him by the 8th. Brook could no longer clinch like mad to keep Spence from throwing punches, because he kept hitting him in the midsection each time he reached forward to initiate a hold.

This was Spence’s coming out party last Saturday night, and he was simply fantastic. Yeah, it took a while for Spence to get his game together, but once he was warmed up and fighting well in the 5th, it was all gravy for him from that point on. It was like watching Spence’s fight against Chris Algieri. The fight became that one-sided. Once Spence got into his groove, it wasn’t even competitive like the Spence vs. Leonard Bundu fight.

Brook was totally overwhelmed by the power, class and boxing skills of Spence. The Brook-Spence fight became Spence vs. Algieri 2.0, which is what I predicted it would be. In the second half of the fight, Spence had completely taken over the fight. I believe the injury to Brook’s left eye came in the 8th round after Spence hit him with a big 1-2 combination to the head. Brook immediately dabbed at his eye after getting hit with the combo. Even before Brook did that, I was astonished how he’d taken those hard blows from Spence without going down, because they were thrown with a lot of heat. Spence literally wound up with both shots like he was bowling. He had both arms winding up before throwing them.