Kell Brook too brave at times says Sanchez

Boxingnews24.com

By Scott Gilfoid: If Kell Brook gets knocked out in a war against Errol Spence Jr. this Saturday night, you can blame it on him for being too brave for his own good. Abel Sanchez, the trainer for Gennady “GGG” Golovkin, says one of the main reasons his fighter was able to get the better of Brook in their fight on September 10 last year was because Brook made the mistake of standing in front of GGG and trying to fight with him instead of boxing and moving.

Let’s be real. Brook is NOT going to beat Spence on Saturday night by running around the ring for 12 rounds. Brook is going to need to be brave and fight if he wants to keep his IBF title. I don’t care if the judges give Brook if round, he’s going to get knocked out if he just runs round the ring, holding and spoiling like we saw in his fight against Shawn Porter.

Brook did move a lot, but the large British crowd got him energized in the 2nd round after he landed some nice shots. Sanchez believes that once Brook started listening to and responding to the pro-Brook crowd, he was doomed, because he had gotten away from his original game plan of purely boxing Golovkin.

Sanchez thinks that Brook has a good chance of beating Spence because he thinks it’s too early for the 27-year-old American. Sanchez thinks Spence should have waited for 3 more fights before he fought Brook. Unfortunately, that would make Spence 28-years-old, and Brook might not even be a welterweight by then. Not much is going to change in a year and a half for Spence. He’d be older, and someone else would likely have taken the IBF title by that point. The money would have likely been less for Spence, and he’d have lost another year of his career waiting. It’s a good thing Spence isn’t following Sanchez’s advice. You’d hate to see him wait until he’s 30 before fighting for a world title.

”He’s a little brave at times. He, like all fighters, is a warrior and he got away from what his strengths are. His strengths are to throw triple combinations and make sure he kept Golovkin at bay,” said Sanchez to skysports.com about Brook. ”Golovkin being the bigger guy was a little difficult for him.”

If Brook chooses to throw triple combinations against Spence, he’s going to leave himself open to getting hit in the bread basket with the 2012 U.S Olympian’s body shots. You can argue that Brook’s major weakness in his game is taking body shots. Go back to Brook’s first fight with Carson Jones in 2012, which he should have lost in my view, he was getting hit with body shots that hurt him. Brook was doing fine in his fight against Golovkin in the early rounds, but once Golovkin hit him with a body shot in the 5th, it was all over. Brook never recovered from that shot, because he was not going to fight back from that point on. The pain must have been incredible for Brook. For him not to throw shots in the last 20 seconds of the fight, he was definitely broken from right that Golovkin hit him with to the body in round 5.

Spence might not hit as hard as Triple G with his best shots, but I think he’s more than hard enough to hurt Brook. What makes Spence capable of knocking Brook out faster than GGG did is the way he commits to the body. Spence will be throwing more body shots in the early rounds than Golovkin. The two fighters have different philosophies about fighting. Spence is more of a true old school fighter than Golovkin with more discipline.

Golovkin seems to be enamored with knocking guys out with highlight reel head shots. It looks more impressive when a fighter knocks out their opponent with a head shot that topples them over than it does with a body shot. When you hurt a fighter with a body shot, they often go to a knee and are counted out. The boxing fans often boo when a fighter does get up from their knees after getting hit to the body. Golovkin tries to make sure that his opponents are knocked down from big blows to the head. The boxing public loves that. However, it also makes Golovkin’s job a lot tougher, because it’s not easy to land head shots against fighters that know you’re strictly a head hunter. If Golovkin mixed up his punches a little bit better by throwing more body shots, he would have an easier time knocking guys out. He’s too preoccupied with looking good instead of fighting smart and mixing up his punches more.

”If Kell is able to get off fast, if Kell is able to dictate, he’s a dangerous guy,” said Sanchez about Brook. ”He wasn’t going to run, he was going to stand there and fight and sometimes when you have skills like that, it’s not the best option.”

I do believe that Brook will run from Spence on Saturday night once he feels his punching power to the body in the 1st round. It’s predictable to guess what Brook will be doing against Spence. Brook always does the same thing in his fights when he faces guys that have power. Brook always backs off and moves around on the outside. Brook then comes forward and throws two or three shots. He then either ties up his opponents or he scurries away, treating the fight like a game of tag. If Brook is pressured a great deal, he’ll start clinching frequently to keep his opponents from throwing punches.

With many of today’s referees not good at dealing with fighters that clinch nonstop, Brook has gotten away with his frequent holding in the past. If you look at the amount of clinching Brook did in his fight against Shawn Porter in 2014, it’s shocking at how the referee let him get away with it. Take a look at what a good referee did to a fighter doing a similar amount of holding in the Lennox Lewis vs. Henry Akinwande fight. The referee chose to disqualify Akinwande for his holding, but he was doing the same amount of clinching that Brook did in the Porter fight. The difference was the referee that worked the Lewis-Akinwande fight was enforcing the excessive clinching rules. Today’s referees don’t seem to enforce the excessive clinching rules for some reason. They’ve just forgotten about that rule, and it’s made boxing boring to watch to some extent. It’s a good thing that referees haven’t stopped enforcing the low blow rules. Once they stop enforcing that rule, it’s going to be bedlam.

The key to victory for Spence on Saturday night is to make sure he doesn’t let Brook get away with tying him up 10+ times per round to neutralize his offense each time he tries to get in position to throw a punch. That’s what Brook did in the Porter fight, and it was pretty sad to see the referee just standing there and doing absolutely nothing to stop Brook from breaking the rules. Spence has got to assume that Brook will clinch like mad on Saturday, because he’s done it in the past and gotten away with it. When a fighter is able to bend the rules without being penalized, then you can bet they’re going to fall back to that habit when facing someone that they can’t beat in a normal one on one fight. I don’t think Brook has the talent to beat Spence. As such, I see Brook going back to the game plan that he used against Porter by tying Spence up over and over again while the referee just stands and watches without doing anything about it.

”I don’t think [trainer] Dominic [Ingle] had in mind for him to sit there and trade with Gennady. But once he landed a couple of shots in the second round, he felt that he could,” said Sanchez.

Brook really only landed shots of note in the 2nd round against Golovkin. Brook wasn’t doing much of anything from the 3rd. Golovkin was hunting for vengeance in the 3rd round. I’ve seen that round numerous times, and it was a very bad one for Brook. He was knocked down with a left hook to the head that the referee Marlon Wright ruled a slip. I saw it as a legitimate knockdown. After Brook got up, he looked shaken and he started running like mad. Golovkin treated the knockdown as a real one, because he started attacking even more. Brook took some MAJOR shots to the head in the 3rd. He was essentially finished in that round. Round 4 and 5 saw Brook running around the ring and only throwing a few token shots. I hate to say it but Brook only fought well in the 2nd round against Golovkin. Brook was hurt in round 1, battered in round 3 and chased in rounds 4 and 5. There was nothing heroic or impressive with what Brook did in 4 of the 5 rounds. He just had good round in the 2nd. Against Spence, Brook is going to need to be able to fight him because he’s not going to clinch or run his way to a victory.