Spence expects to beat Brook in one-sided fight

Boxingnews24.com

By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) could be in for a real beating on Saturday night by challenger Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs) at Bramall Lane in Sheffield, England. Spence says the boxing fans can expect to see him in the same one-sided fight that he’s been putting on when he gets inside the ring with Brook, who he feels won’t go the full 12 round distance with him.

Spence says Brook is going to have to go through a real grinder if he does make it the full 12 round distance with him. Brook just went through a rough fight in his last contest against Gennady Golovkin last September. That fight saw Brook suffer an eye injury. Brook was able to get some shots in every now and then in the fight, but he was taking vicious punishment from the 3rd round on.

Brook wasn’t able to stand and fight. Brook was basically conceding the fight to Golovkin by not standing stranding his ground. Of course, the judges were giving Brook round after round even with him in the full retreat move by round 3. The reality is, Brook wasn’t winning anything. He was done after the 2nd. The judges were giving Brook rounds that he didn’t deserve.

That’s the thing that Spence has to watch for – bad judging. Shawn Porter’s father Kenny Porter says Spence is going to need to make sure that he doesn’t let any of the rounds be close, because he feels that he could lose the fight if he doesn’t make them absolutely decisive in his favor.

“This is something I’ve been waiting for and I can definitely knock him out in front of his home fans,” Spence Jr. said to Sky Sports News HQ. “It’s nothing but motivation; they’ll be cheering for me at the end of the night. It’s wartime, all the talking is over, it’s time to glove up and see who is the best welterweight in the division.”

I don’t think the winner of the Brook-Spence fight will show who the best fighter in the 147 pound division. The winner of the fight will still need to face Keith Thurman, the WBA/WBC welterweight champion, as well as Danny Garcia, Shawn Porter and Manny Pacquiao. Terence Crawford could be moving up to 147 in the near However, as painfully thin as Brook and Spence were at Friday’s weigh-in, I do not think either of them will be able to stay at welterweight for very much longer. They look like they’re making the weight.

“He looks ready,” said Spence Jr. “This is something I’ve waited for my whole life, to fight a great opponent, a great champion, and we’re going to dethrone him on Saturday night.”

Brook is as ready as he’ll ever be for the fight against Spence. To be honest, Brook didn’t take a lot of punishment in his loss to Gennady Golovkin last September. Brook did a good job of evading most of the big shots Golovkin was trying to hit him with. I saw 2 really hard punches from Golovkin land in the entire 5 round fight. Both of those were head shots. One of them fractured Brook’s eye socket in the 1st round. The other big right hand head shot that Golovkin landed in the 3rd round when Brook was against the ropes.

That shot was REALLY hard. I couldn’t believe Brook took it. But after Brook took the shot, he scurried away like he’d been scalded with hot water. You could tell Brook wanted more of Golovkin after eating that right hand. Golovkin fought an incredibly dumb fight. Despite GGG’s trainer Abel Sanchez telling him that he needed to start throwing body shots, Golovkin ignored him and continued to throw nothing but head shots. This made Brook’s job easy because he was able to keep his guard up to his face to pick off shots. Better yet, Brook was able to use head movement to make Golovkin miss.

When Golovkin finally got a clue in the round 5 and hit Brook with a right hand to the solar plexus, he dropped his guard to his midsection didn’t even attempt to cover up his head while Golovkin flurried on him with his shots. Some of them missed, but at least 4 thudding shots hit home. You could tell that Brook must have been mortally wounded by that right hand body shot from Golovkin because he didn’t even try to cover up his head.

That was it for Brook for the night. After getting hit with that body shot, Brook didn’t even try and fight back in the last 20 seconds of the fight. Brook used the ropes as a walking cane and went to the other sides of the ring where he was pummeled by head shots from GGG until his trainer Dominic Ingle did the sensible thing and threw in the towel to have the fight stopped.

“It’s nothing but energy,” said Spence to Fighthype about the booing from Brook’s boxing fans. “I’m using it as motivation. I’m using it to motivate me. I can’t wait for Saturday night to hear the boos, and at the end of the fight, they will be cheering me on. It’ll take me to the top of the mountain. Beating a champion like Kell Brook and beating him in his hometown on foreign turf, it’s a legacy defining fight for me and take me straight to the top. I don’t think it’s going 12 rounds at all,” said Spence.

I don’t know if you can really call this a legacy-building fight for Spence. I mean, Brook just got beat in his last fight against Golovkin. It would be a legacy-building fight for Spence if Brook had beaten Golovkin instead of losing to him. Whether Brook and his loyal boxing fans want to admit it or now, he quit in the Golovkin fight. He definitely quit.

When you stand and you don’t throw punches the way that Brook was in the final sequence in round 5, it tells me that he quit. Unfortunately, you know the old saying – ‘Once a quitter always a quitter.” I hate to say it but I wouldn’t be surprised if Brook stops throwing punches once he gets hit with a shot to the bread basket by Spence. I think that is the major weakness that Brook has. It’s not taking shots to the head. It’s taking body shots. Brook can’t take it to the body.

I guess the reason why Brook has lasted this long in the welterweight division is because fighters don’t work the body like they used to do back in the old days. Spence is kind of a retro-type of fighter that you would see in the 30s through 60s. Back then, fighters threw body shots. The reason why fighters don’t work the body now is because it puts you in harm’s way. In other to throw body shots, you’ve got to take a certain amount of punishment. I think that might be one of the reasons why Golovkin veers away from working the body of his opponents. Golovkin doesn’t like to take head shots.

“We know that Errol Spence is a former Olympian,” said Kenny Porter to Behind The Gloves. “There’s a lot of questions that have to be answered about Errol.”

“We had no clue that he would implement as much holding as he did in that fight,” said Porter about Brook’s frequent clinching he did in his win over Shawn Porter in 2014. “That was the deciding factor to me. It was not his ability to out-box Shawn or his ability to out-punch Shawn or his ability to move around the ring. It was his ability to hold and keep Shawn locked down is what kept him in the fight.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get the decision. We looking forward to rematching Kell Brook. We have no problem coming to the UK for a rematch with Kell Brook. Errol Spence has to be aware of that, and I think he is. Errol Spence has to go in there and make sure he makes it decisive in every round. This is the one that will make him. It won’t break him, but it will definitely make him. I think he’s the harder puncher in this fight. My prediction is Errol Spence wins by late stoppage,” said Kenny Porter.

So there it is. Kenny is picking Spence to win by a knockout on Saturday night. I must say, I totally agree with Kenny. I think Spence knocks Brook out. I also agree that Spence MUST win each round decisively if he wants to win a decision. Heck, even if Spence wins the rounds decisively, I don’t see him being given the decision. The only way I see Spence winning a decision is if he knocks Brook down 6 times in the fight. Anything less than that, I see Brook winning a VERY controversial decision. But look at the awful scoring from Brook’s fight with Golovkin.

When you have a judge having Brook up 3 rounds to 1 after 4, and the two scoring it 2-2 going into the 5, it tells you that Spence is probably not going to win a decision on Saturday night. You hate to see robberies, but I think that’s what we’re going to see unless Spence knocks Brook out to where he can’t fight.

Spence had better be ready for Brook to try his clinching tricks, because I definitely see him implementing that tactic at some point when he realizes he doesn’t have the talent to compete with him. Once things start looking bleak for Brook, he’ll switch into Plan-B, which will be the nonstop clinching, if that’s not his Plan-A. You never know. Brook’s Plan-A might be the nonstop clinching. Gosh, I hope not because it would be so dreadful to watch going back to his grabbing routine again.

“It’s lame. I guess that’s what they like over there,” said Spence to Behind The Gloves about Brook talking about wanting to knock him out with his “Chocolate Brownie.” ”They can expect the Errol they’ve been getting. I’ve been putting on one-sided shows for a long time. I don’t think it’s going to go 12 rounds. If it goes 12 rounds, then he’s as tough as hell. I’m not going to say I’m getting knocked down. If it happens, it happens,” said Spence.

Spence sounds like he’s got his mind made up that he’s not going to let the 3 judges have a say so in the outcome of the fight. That’s a wise move for Spence. You don’t want the judges to control your destiny when you’re the visiting fighter. There have been too many robberies throughout the history of boxing when foreign fighters came into another fighter’s country and they had to deal with bad judging.

“He’s at the top of the mountain right now. I welcome that fight,” said Spence about Keith Thurman.