Kell Brook NOT retiring

By Scott Gilfoid: Two days after suffering a broken right eye socket in his defeat to Errol Spence Jr. last Saturday night, Kell Brook is saying that he plans on resuming his boxing career after he recovers from his injury that he sustained at Bramall Lane in Sheffield, England. Brook says he doesn’t want to end his career on a defeat.

Brook says he wants to get back inside the ring and get back to his winning ways, which presumably means he’ll be taking a tune-up/confidence booster type fight when he does return to the boxing ring. Brook’s left eye injury brings uncertainty to his career. We won’t know if Brook will be able to continue his career until after news from the results of his surgery.

If everything goes well with the surgery, Brook would still need to make it through a training camp without suffering any setbacks before he can continue fighting. Brook is saying that he might need surgery. It would be nice if Brook’s eye injury heals up without surgery. However, it’s unclear whether it would be better off if he had surgery. Brook’s right eye socket, which was broken by Gennady Golovkin last September, has a titanium plate that was inserted by the surgeon to strengthen it. Brook claims that his surgically repaired eye socket is stronger than it originally was before the injury.

Brook took a knee in the 10th and 11th rounds to get out of the way of the big shots that the 5’9” Spence was raining on him at the time. Spence looked like a completely different fighter at that point in the fight from the one that had struggled with Brook in the first 5 rounds.

This was a different Spence. He was no longer throwing just 1 or 2 punches and immediately being held by Brook, which is what the first 5 rounds consisted of. This Spence was throwing nonstop shots and not letting Brook grab him to stall him out. When Brook tried to grab Spence to stop him from punching, Spence would hit him to the body, which would cause Brook to pull his hands back in to cover his midsection.

It became impossible for Brook to clinch over and over again like he’d been doing in the first 5 rounds, because Spence kept pelting him with shots to the body when he would reach to hold on. Once Brook could no longer clinch, he was done for. It was only a matter of time before he quit or had the towel thrown in my his trainer Dominic Ingle.

Brook stubbornly refused to relinquish his IBF welterweight title after he was ordered by the International Boxing Federation to fight mandatory challenger Errol Spence Jr. Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn made it clear that he thought it would have been wise for Brook to swerve the Spence fight and move to 154, because he thought he would be better in that weight class. Brook chose to take the fight with Spence anyway, and it obviously wasn’t a good move by him in hindsight.

Brook took a knee twice in rounds 10 and 11 against Spence to escape punishment last Saturday night at Bramall Lane in Sheffield, England. Brook looked in bad shape after he took a knee in the 11th round. Referee Howard John Foster then administered the 10 count while Brook looked around at the crowd and back at Foster. Brook said after the fight that things would have been different if not for the injury.

Maybe they would have, but we’ll never know. Brook suffered the eye injury and there was nothing he could do about it. We’ll never know what could have happened had Brook not sustained the injury. The only thing Brook can do now is make a full recovery from the injury and decide whether he’ll fight at 154 or 147. I think it’s stupid beyond belief for Brook to fight at 154, but he’ll need to find that out on his own I guess.

“When I got caught in the 11th it (his eye) wouldn’t come back into line,” said Brook to skysports.com. “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. I couldn’t leave the sport like that. I need to get back in and get back to my winning ways. I’m still going to need to get back in and show that I’ve got plenty more to give,” said Brook.

There it is. Brook won’t be retiring from boxing. He didn’t mention that he plans on moving up to 154 to try and campaign in that weight class, but that’s the general idea. I cannot see Brook finding any success whatsoever at 154, because there are guys in that weight class that are bigger and more powerful than Errol Spence. We just saw last Saturday night that Brook couldn’t handle Spence’s power. What do you think is going to happen to Brook when he gets inside the ring with some of the big junior middleweights like Jermell Charlo, Erickson Lubin, Julian “J-Rock” Williams, Demetrius Andrade and Erislandy Lara.

Spence was winning the fight on the scorecards at the time the referee Howard John Foster halted the contest in the 11th round. The judges had it 97-92, 95-94 and 96-93. The 95-94 score was very generous to Brook, because he had been struggling in the second half of the fight BIG TIME. Boxing News 24 had Brook winning 4 of the first 6 rounds, but then losing rounds 7, 8, 9 and 10. There was a knockdown in the 10th. Spence appeared to be winning 6 rounds to 4 at the time of the stoppage.

Brook will likely take a tune-up fight against an easy mark at 154 when he returns to the ring. I can see Brook fighting one of these guys:

– Liam Williams

– Liam Smith

– Austin Trout

– Jack Culcay

– Tony Harrison

– Charles Hatley

– Kanat Islam

– Michel Soro

– Sergey Rabchenko

– Yoshihiro Kamegai

– Ishe Smith

– Vanes Martirosyan

If Brook can’t beat this level of fighters at junior middleweight, then there’s no point in him resuming his boxing career, because he won’t find any success at 154. Brook has got to beat these types of fighters because these are the arguably lesser talents in the 154 lb. division at this time.

These are the fighters that Brook will need to beat for him to become a world champion at 154 and stay a champion:

– Jermell Charlo

– Erickson Lubin

– Erislandy Lara

– Julian Williams

– Demerius Andrade

– Jarrett Hurd

I haven’t included Miguel Cotto to that list because he’s made it pretty clear that he’s just playing out his string and will soon be retiring after 2-3 more fights. Cotto isn’t going to bother fighting Brook. I don’t think Brook can beat any of those fighters. I could be wrong though. If Brook is stronger at 154, as his promoter Eddie Hearn seems to think, then he could in theory be able to beat the likes of Charlo, Hurd, Andrade, Lara, Lubin and Williams. I still have my doubts that he can. I think those guys are too big, too strong and too talented for Brook. For Brook to have a chance of doing well at 154, he’s going to need to be able to fight without suffering any additional eye injuries like the ones he’s been sustaining lately.

“I’m devastated. I knew from round seven that the eye had gone and progressively as the rounds went on. I tried to get through the fight and it kept going double vision and then coming back into line,” said Brook.

I don’t think that Brook lost to Spence because of an eye injury. I think he lost to the better fighter. Brook should remain in the welterweight division, because he can do more in this weight class than he’ll be able to do at 154. The top guys at junior middleweight are all basically middleweights. As such, Brook would be moving up 2 weight divisions, not one. I don’t think he realizes that. All the best fighters at 154 are rehydrating into the 170s just like Golovkin does. Some of these guys are even heavier than Golovkin. Brook is a heavy guy as well, but he doesn’t have the same large frames than the hybrid 154 pound fighters do. Brook is more compact like Miguel Cotto is. If you throw Cotto in with a big junior middleweight like Jermell Charlo, Demetrius Andrade or Lubin, he’s likely going to get soundly beaten on size alone. Cotto doesn’t have the frame or the height to deal with the bigger junior middleweights and I see it the same way with Brook.