Spence’s message to Brook: “Another Man Down”

Boxingnews24.com

By Scott Gilfoid: Errol “The Truth” Spence (21-0, 18 KOs) was short and to the point during Thursday’s final press conference in remaking to the boxing media what the end result will be for IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) when the two of them meet on Saturday night by saying it’ll be “Another Man Down.” That’s Spence’s motto, “Man Down,” and he plans on following the motto by quickly obliterating Brook on Saturday night in front of his British fans, which is expected to be over 30,000 fans.

Let me tell you, it’s going to be a MAJOR buzz-kill for Brook’s horde of boxing fans if Spence comes out and knocks him the spark out on Saturday. Brook’s fans won’t be able to yap and sing songs and blow horns and whatnot to try and throw Spence off. If it’s an easy knockout for Spence, it’ll be really bad for Brook.

With all the bragging that Brook has been doing lately, it’s going to make him look kind of funny if he’s blown out by Spence. I don’t know what you can saw if you’re Brook. He can’t blame a knockout loss on his eye again, and he can’t try and reinvent history by saying he was lifting Spence off his feet with his punches like he said about his fight with Gennady Golovkin.

I’m hoping Brook takes the high road by giving Spence credit because it looks better to the boxing public when a defeated fighter gives kudos to his conqueror instead of them complaining and saying that they would have won the fight if this or that had happened. Brook would have never beaten Golovkin even if his right eye socket hadn’t been busted early in the fight. Golovkin was just too powerful and talented for Brook. When Brook was supposedly landing shots in the first 4 rounds, the shots were actually being blocked on the gloves of Golovkin.

I’ve seen the fight in slow motion and the majority of the shots that the Boxing fans thought Brook was landing to the head of Golovkin were in fact hitting his gloves. On the flipside, Golovkin’s punches were connecting to the head of Brook repeatedly. In slow motion, I couldn’t even give Brook the 2nd round because he only landed one effective punch in the entire round and that was the uppercut that he hit Golovkin with. The other shots were all blocked by Golovkin. That’s how skilled Triple G is as a fighter. But all the screaming from Brook’s fans during the round showed how judges can be influenced by crowd noise rather than what actually is happening inside the ring.

This is Spence’s coming out party on Saturday night. It’s too bad that it’s Brook that will be the sacrificial lamb because he’s coming off of hardship in his 5th round knockout loss to Gennady Golovkin. In hindsight, Brook should have rejected that fight with GGG when his promoter Eddie Hearn offered it to him. I’m sure Brook will look back at that decision later on in life and regret taking the fight with Triple G. But in the case of Spence, Brook should have listened to Hearn, who actually had some useful advice for him by telling him that he should “swerve” the talented American.

Brook chose to ignore Hearn’s advice and now his stubbornness could cause him to suffer a second consecutive knockout loss, but this time in front of a much larger crowd than the ones that turned up to see him fight Golovkin at the O2 Arena in London, England last September. What the 31-year-old Brook doesn’t need is for his British boxing fans to get used to seeing him getting stopped by visiting foreigners with better power and dare I say superior talent.

What can you do though? Brook needs to start thinking on his feet and learning to say no when it comes to some of these fights. Brook was in his in his ideal environment when he was being fed fodder opposition for years and years against guys like Frankie Gavin, Jo Jo Dan, Kevin Bizier, Matthew Hatton, Vyacheslav Senchenko, Alvaro Robles, Hector Saldivia and Carson Jones. Brook has had a ton of record-padding fights against guys with meager talent. If you strip away the fodder that Brook has fought, his record is 1-1. The only two good opponents Brook has fought have been Golovkin and Shawn Porter. We saw how Brook beat Porter by clinching him all night long.

”I want to be remembered as the guy to fight everybody, who never ducked anybody and was involved in some great, great fights,” said Brook to Sky Sports News HQ. “Beating Errol Spence Jr. puts me at No 1 spot in the welterweight division. Everybody knows then that I’m the man.”
Brook says he wanted to be remembered as the guy that never ducked anybody. Well, if that’s the case then why didn’t Brook give Porter a rematch after clinching his way to a 12 round decision over him in 2014? Why did Brook fight weak opposition like Jo Jo Dan, Frankie Gavin and Kevin Bizier? Why did Brook waste his first 12 years of his career mostly fighting weak opposition? What Brook should be saying is that he only wants to fight the best from this point on, because he clearly WASN’T fighting the best from the start of his career.

Like I said, Brook has only fought 2 good guys during his entire career and that was Porter and Golovkin. The rest of the guys are fighters that are not ranked or at least not ranked now. Look at the top 15 and tell me if you can see Dan, Jones, Gavin, Bizier, Senhenko, Saldivia or Matthew Hatton there. Those are sadly Brook’s best opponents apart from his fights against Golovkin and Porter.

If Brook beats Spence without it being seen as hometown decision by the boxing public, then he’ll still need to beat Keith Thurman, Porter, Manny Pacquiao and Danny Garcia before he can stand up and crow about him being the best welterweight in the division. The last time I checked the 27-year-old Spence has only been fighting in the pro ranks since 2012, and he’s not a world champion. As such, even if Brook does get the ‘W’ over Brook, he’ll still need to beat 4 more fighters before he can start bragging about himself being the best. I include Porter because Brook didn’t beat him fair and square in their 2014 fight in my opinion. All that ugly clinching that Brook used to keep Porter from throwing punches should have resulted in him being penalized repeatedly and tossed out of the fight by the referee. For some reason, the referee let Brook hold Porter over and over again without doing his job and making him fight fairly without cheating.

”No. I’ll tell the truth. But I’ll prove myself on Saturday night – I have the skills and the ability. This is a lifelong dream of mine,” said Spence when asked if he’d ever fought anyone as good as Kell Brook during his pro career. “Another man down – all the talking is over with. Saturday night, let’s glove up.”

Well, yeah, it’s obvious that Spence has never fought anyone as good as Brook before during his short 5-year pro career. Spence’s management has been taking it easy with him, perhaps too easy. Spence has beaten decent opposition like Leonard Bundu and Chris Algieri. Those are good basic fighters. But you don’t need to see Spence fighting the best in order to recognize what kind of talent he is. We’ve seen his talent in his pro fights and his amateur fights in the 2012 Olympics. The talent is there with Spence.

The yapping from Brook isn’t going to change things on Saturday night. If he doesn’t have the ability to get the job done, he’s not going to be able to talk his way to a win over Spence. The same goes for Brook’s boxing fans that will be there to see the Brook-Spence fight live on Saturday night at Bramall Lane in Sheffield, England. The fans won’t be able to unnerve Spence to cause him not to throw punches. If Brook doesn’t have the chin to withstand the big salvos that Spence is going to be bouncing off his face, then it’s going to be “Another Man Down” on Saturday night. Spence will be able to add Brook’s hide to his growing collection of fine pelts.