Kell Brook has recently come out to state that he was suffering from a plethora of issues following his loss to Golovkin in 2016, and the retired British fighter attributes the orbital bone he suffered against Golovkin as the main cause for his loss to Spence, and the subsequent downturn of his career.
Making an appearance on British television presenter Simon Jordan’s Up Front With Simon Jordan show, Kell Brook attributed the aftermath of his fight with Gennady Golovkin in 2016 as the reason for his physical health issues, and asserted that he would have won against Errol Spence Jr. (28-1, 22 KO’s) if he had recuperated fully.
“One-hundred percent,” Brook stated after being asked by Jordan whether he’d be in a better position to defeat Spence had he not fought Golovkin.
“Don’t forget I didn’t have to make 147 [lbs], I had to make middleweight to start with. So, after that [Golovkin] fight I’m a middleweight, and on top of that fight I had my eyes [orbital bone] broken.“
Brook went on to reveal his promoter at the time, Eddie Hearn, had advised him to vacate his title rather than fight Errol Spence who had become the mandatory to the IBF welterweight title that Brook held at the time. Brook would go on to refuse Hearn’s request citing that he had “earned the title”.
In 2016, the IBF made Spence the mandatory in August; a month prior to when Brook faced Golovkin on September 10th. While Brook’s IBF welterweight title was then not on the line and Golovkin was instead defending his WBO and IBF middleweight titles during their bout, Brook suffered an orbital bone injury during the match and according to him had not fully recovered by the time he faced Spence on May 27th in 2017.
“And I put all this weight on and [then] I’m dragging weight back off me,” Kell Brook continued, referring to when he was moving down from middleweight to welterweight in order to fight Spence to defend his title.
“The training camp was terrible. I wanted to be away from Sheffield and just be completely and naturally focused on this fight.”
Brook claimed that there were also personal problems that were affecting him; compiled with his orbital bone issues and need to lose at least 21 pounds of weight after having participated at Middleweight against Golovkin. It even came to the point that Brook’s father advised him to pull out due to the multiple issues he was facing.
“We were getting close to the fight, we had me dad and everyone saying, ‘you need to pull out of this fight’,” Brook revealed.
“The fighter [in me], and selling all these tickets, and training―I’m thinking, ‘I’m going to make this weight, I got to fight’. I’m a fighter. But looking back, that would be the one fight that I wish I would have pulled out of, and extended the fight.“
Errol Spence Jr. went on to win his bout against Kell Brook by knockout (KO), and for the past seven years it had been presumed that Brook had been healthy as no real excuses had been made by the British fighter afterwards.
However, Brook now claims that he was indeed “damaged”, which primarily draws some concerns surrounding the British Boxing Board of Control’s (BBBofC) assessment methods in identifying Brook’s health, but also sullies Spence’s win over Brook who was dealing with both mental issues stemming from personal problems and physical issues surrounding the orbital bone injury he suffered against Golovkin.
Reports later surfaced after Brook’s bout with Spence that he had again broken his orbital bone during that fight, which appears to confirm Brook’s statements that he had not been in full health prior to facing Spence.
Kell Brook went on to further unveil that he had not prepared well against Terence Crawford (40-0, 31 KO’s) when they fought in November of 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and that his lack of proper preparation contributed to his fourth-round stoppage loss against the American former undisputed welterweight champion.
“We’re in lockdown, I had a trainer [Carlos Formento] I never trained with before [and] who spoke very little English, so I just had to deal with the situation how I could.” Brook said.
Brook’s revelations now put both Spence’s and Crawford’s victories over him in disrepute, and in the case of the former seems to heavily whittle down the reputation of Spence who first became a world champion after defeating Kell Brook. Crawford additionally also suffers a blow as his victory can be attributed more so to Brook’s lack of preparation rather than his own boxing ability.
Despite the fallout that Brook’s statements may cause, there is a sense of closure as the former welterweight champion reveals the rather dubious state of his physical health following the Golovkin fight. During his career, which spanned from 2004 to 2022, Brook netted his first and only world title in 2014 after beating then-IBF welterweight champion Shawn Porter, and he went on to defend the title thrice before losing to Golovkin.
Prior to his tenure as world champion, Brook won several domestic and continental titles. He accumulated a record of forty wins and three losses before retiring in 2022.
