By Edward Chaykovsky
Dominic Ingle, who is the head trainer for IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) has been reading the press clippings about their upcoming opponent for the last few months.
A deal was reached on Monday for Brook to make a mandatory defense of his title against unbeaten United States Olympian Errol Spence (21-0, 18 KOs). The fight is being targeted for either May 20 or May 27 in Brook's hometown of Sheffield.
Spence is being touted as the "next big thing" in the sport. Even Floyd Mayweather Jr. has called Spence the "future of boxing."
Ingle is not worried about the media's evaluations of Spence. He remembers back when Jeff Lacy traveled over to the UK to fight Joe Calzaghe. The Welsh boxer was a huge underdog, even among the UK press. He did what nobody expected by dominating and beating down Lacy for twelve one-sided rounds.
“I’ve looked at him [Spence], watched his fights, watched him coming through. He’s good at what he does, but it’s like anything else, I look back at the situation with Jeff Lacy and he had all this hype and was meant to be the next big thing and Calzaghe took him to pieces. I’m not saying this will be the same thing, but Kell knows what he’s going in with," Ingle told Boxing News.
Ingle disputes the allegations that his boxer tried to avoid his mandatory obligation to Spence by pursuing a high profile money fight with domestic rival Amir Khan. Those talks fell apart when Khan demanded a 70-30 split in his favor.
“So you can talk about Brook not wanting to fight and ducking and diving, people will always say it, people said he’d duck Spence, but a fighter’s always going to fight and they want the biggest purse for the fight. Down to a fight between Khan and Spence, you’d take the Khan fight as it’s the bigger fight, you’re not ducking anybody, it’s just the biggest amount of money.