Brook-Spence: Kell’s weight loss has me concerned

Boxingnews24.com

By Scott Gilfoid: Kell Brook has undergone a RAPID weight loss process in getting down to the 147 pound limit for his title defense against mandatory challenger Errol Spence Jr. on May 27. With 3 weeks to go before their fight at Bramall Lane in Sheffield, England. IBF welterweight champion Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) is already down to 153 pounds as of last week. I don’t see where the other 6 lbs. of weight is going to come off of Brook. He’s already a skeleton.

I can just imagine how Brook is probably being worked over by his sparring partners in camp. He’s too thin now. He went from being a fat, puffy cheeked fighter 5 weeks ago to a skin and bones fighter. The transformation is scary. It’s one of those before and after type things you see on TV where some overweight person losses a bunch of weight in order to sell some product. With Brook 3 weeks out, I think he’s gone overboard with the weight loss.

This is going to be TOO easy for Spence. We’re probably talking about Brook vs. Chris Algieri II type of situation where with Brook. He might as well hand the IBF belt over to Spence right now and save himself the indignity of being smashed inside the ring in front of 32,000 boxing fans at Bramall Lane. Of course, Brook is going to go through with the fight, but it won’t be a pretty picture, believe me. I guess it’s really gotten to Brook with all the boxing fans that have been pointing out that they think he’s been ducking Spence. I think Brook has let it get to him, because his weight loss is unreal.

That’s 30+ lbs. that the 30-year-old Brook has lost since he started training camp 5 weeks ago. How in the heck do you lose 30 lbs. of blubber in just 5 weeks? I don’t like it. He looked atrophied with muscle loss along with the fat. In photo I saw of Brook, he looked skin and bones, like he’d been on a calorie restrictive diet to get down to 147. I’ve never seen Brook this light this early for one of his fights. How is it he’s already down to 153? I think he’s gone overboard with his training.

You know what that means? It’s doomsday for Brook. I think he did exactly what Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. did in taking the weight loss to the extreme for his fight last weekend against Saul Canelo Alvarez. Chavez Jr. looked like a skeleton out there inside the ring with Canelo. If it had been a long distance running event, Chavez Jr. would have smoked Canelo, but this was boxing. Chavez Jr. didn’t belong out there being that thin.

For his part, Brook looks like he’s been on a starvation of bread and water to get down to 147. That is dumb, dumb and dumb. My question is why isn’t Brook’s trainer Dominic Ingle getting him to slow down with the weight loss? He should be making him eat so he doesn’t work himself away to nothing but skin and bones. Spence is going to be going to be huge inside the ring after he rehydrates for this fight. If Brook is at all-time low for his weight, he’s going to get obliterated by Spence. We don’t need more excuses from Brook.

We heard Brook blaming his loss to Gennady Golovkin on him having an eye injury. Brook even went so far as to say that he would have beaten Golovkin if he didn’t suffer the eye injury. But if Brook is weight drained for the Spence fight, then you can guess that’s going to be the first thing out of his mouth when he starts yapping away to the boxing public when he’s at the post-fight press conference trying to explain to them why he was beaten by Spence. I’m REALLY hoping that Brook turns out a new leaf and doesn’t start with the excuses if/when he loses to Spence, because it’s so tiresome. Brook needs to give Spence credit by telling it like it is by saying, ‘I lost to the best fighter in the welterweight division.

I didn’t have the talent that he did. He was superior to me.’ I just don’t picture Brook doing that. Future events cast their shadows before. I’m predicting a lot of excuses from Brook starting with him saying he was weight drained. Ingle should start force feeding Brook with some turkeys and pies to get that weight back on him. He’s got 3 more weeks to go before the fight. There’s no reason that Brook should already be down to 153 with this much time to go before the fight. The weigh-in was last week. That means Brook was already at 153 with 4 weeks to go. I do not understand that dramatic weight loss.

Brook bulked up to last September to fight IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin, and was bigger than inside the ring on the night. I heard some of Brook’s fans voicing concern about him being the smaller guy. He wasn’t the smaller fighter in the ring. It was Golovkin. Brook was bigger. Brook has now turned around and reduced all that muscle weight he put on for the GGG fight, and he’s done it in a little over 1 month. I’m sorry, but I think he’s going to be a skeleton inside the ring with the talented Spence on May 27.

I hate to say it, but I see this fight ending badly for Brook with Spence literally wiping the deck with him from one side of the ring to the other. I just hope for Brook’s sake that his trainer Dominic Ingle has a good weighty towel that he can sail inside the ring to alert the referee when the going gets bad for Kell. Ingle couldn’t get much distance on the white towel of surrender when he tossed into the ring during the 5th round in the Golovkin-Brook fight on September 10 last year. Golovkin was giving it to Brook, hammering him with power shots aplenty while the white towel that Ingle threw into the ring was unseen by the referee Marlon Wright.

It was lucky for Brook that Wright finally saw in time to keep him from getting knocked clean out, because he was maybe two or three punches away from being laid out pretty. When the referee finally stopped the contest, Brook was staggering around like he didn’t know where he was going. What was interesting about that was moments before, Brook was taunting Golovkin, as if to say, ‘Ha, you can’t hit me.’ The problem was, Golovkin was hitting him and hitting A LOT.

It was a massacre at that point in the fight because Brook had stopped throwing punches and had basically quit on his feet. He totally needed saving by Ingle, because when a fighter stops throwing punches the way Brook did, they’ve called it quits in the fight. At that point, you have to save them. The referee probably should have stopped it, and he might have if Brook wasn’t taunting Golovkin by having his arms to the side. That wasn’t exactly the smartest thing in the world for Brook to do, but he appeared to be trying to save face with his boxing fans rather than having them see him standing perfectly still and surrender.