Gennady Golovkin Is Too Big, Bad and Brutal to Be Tested by Kell Brook
Is this really happening again so soon? Is a middleweight champ really taking on a welterweight who has never competed in the division? Do weight classes even exist anymore?
These questions are what I pondered after the press release was sent out on Friday announcing Gennady Golovkin’s upcoming middleweight title defense against Kell Brook on September 10. It was followed, of course, by that eerie, all-too-familiar feeling of dread once again embracing the boxing world.
Another trash fight.
"I feel the same about GGG-Brook as the Canelo-Khan fight. Love the competitive fire Brook shows here, but weight classes exist for a reason.
— Paul Malignaggi (@PaulMalignaggi) July 8, 2016"
Preach, Paulie.
Is it really too much these days to ask a middleweight champ to defend his claim—alphabet, lineal or otherwise—against someone who is at minimum a tad bit larger than a 147-pound welterweight?
Gennady Golovkin—an undefeated middleweight monster, one of the hardest punchers in the sport and possibly the scariest fighter since Mike Tyson, Sonny Liston or even Jack Dempsey—is set to defend his various middleweight alphabet titles, as well as his universal acceptance as the best 160-pounder in the world today, against Brook, a welterweight titleholder from London who has done virtually nothing in his career to deserve it.
Good for him if he's paid well enough. But bad for the rest of us.
Don't misunderstand me. Brook is a heck of a welterweight, quite possibly even the best 147-pounder in the world today. But we don’t really know it yet. Do we? One doesn’t lay claim to being a division’s best, especially one as stacked as 147, by defeating a list of notables that starts and ends with Shawn Porter.
Yes, I am aware he’s won 35 other fights, but how many of those were against elite-level competition?
It's zero.
That’s the same level of intrigue this bout should stir in your heart, by the way, if you’re still on the fence about it. This bout is the very definition of a trash fight. It’s a pointless encounter between two fighters who should be facing others that night—a bout with a pretty much predetermined outcome.
Sigh.
The promotion makes a bit of sense in a few ways. Unfortunately, though, none of them really matter to the people who watch fights.
From Golovkin’s side, it seems decent for them to take their guy across the pond to do some marketing. He’s pretty popular already, and the sky is the limit for walking knockout machines who have nice smiles.
For Brook's people, the bout is a win-win situation. If he shocks the world and beats Golovkin, he sets himself up for an astounding superstar-level career that would allow him to make and break fights the way only boxing’s biggest power-brokers can do. And if he gets clobbered as expected, so long as he faces the onslaught with dignity and bravery, he’ll come out ahead in our hearts and will be celebrated for it.
Boxing adores winners, but it loves its losers, too, so long as the loser went down swinging.
And for the promoters and HBO and whoever else is attached to revenue stream the bout generates, it’s perfectly acceptable for them to make and market fights so that everyone involved makes a decent amount of money. If they didn’t, we’d all be stuck watching the UFC the rest of our lives or giving up the viewing of elite fight sports altogether.
Regardless, it’s a dumb fight. With rare exceptions, I want to see middleweights versus middleweights and welterweights versus welterweights. This kind of bout shouldn’t be a trend.
Canelo Alvarez, the lineal middleweight champion, and the fighter everyone wants to see face Golovkin next, did virtually the very same thing for his last title defense. Alvarez faced the small, fast and brave Amir Khan two months ago in a mismatch nobody wanted to see.
Alvarez walloped him in Round 6.
Brook might be better than Khan. He’s younger, stronger and has never been defeated. He’s a really good fighter.
But Golovkin is almost certainly more dangerous than Alvarez. He’s bigger, badder and as brutal as they come. Golovkin hasn’t just beaten every fighter placed in front of him. He’s destroyed them. And all these guys were bigger than Brook.
Like Canelo-Khan in May, Golovkin-Brook is a pointless, unwanted and totally unnecessary clash between two fighters who have no competitive reason to be in the ring together. Let’s hope this kind of nonsense isn’t the new normal.
.jpg?w=480 "Giants Browns Football")
.jpg?w=600 "Burrow's IG Story Before Trade 🧐")
