By Peter Lim
Never mind the obvious and often over-hyped size difference between the two; Gennady Golovkin will still be a solid favorite against Kell Brook, given the Kazakh's superior knockout percentage and level of opposition. Even if Brook were a natural middleweight, he would still be facing an opponent with the punching power of a light heavyweight who has effortlessly dismantled a spectrum of opponents with a diaspora of styles.
Executioners, in this day and age of capital punishment, exist in two diametric extremes. In the Middle East, there are sword-wielding butchers who decapitate with sheer brute muscle power, and, in the supposedly more civilized United States, clinicians deliver the same result with a scientifically calculated series of lethal injections.
From a pugilistic standpoint, Golovkin is an eclectic hybrid of both. He has beaten slick, speedier southpaws (Monroe) to the punch, overpowered bonified brawlers (Rubio) and clinically dissected power punchers (Lemieux) almost exclusively with his educated jab. Multi-faceted as he is, Golovkin has dropped and stopped opponents from impromptu punch angles to the head and body with both fists.
Brook, on the other hand, has won virtually all of his fights as the baddass barroom brawler. He has always just been that much stronger, tougher and more alpha than everyone he has encountered thus far, Shawn Porter included. Granted, he has darn good boxing ability, but that's merely complimentary, incidental almost, to his success at this juncture of his career.
Brook has said that, should he beat Golovkin, it would represent a bigger upset than Sugar Ray Leonard's 1987 monumental victory over Marvin Hagler. But it is Roberto Duran, the fighter who also climbed two divisions to upset Leonard, that Brook must emulate if he wants to unseat Golovkin. Leonard was faster, broader framed and had better technical skills, yet Duran was able to taunt, lure and out-macho Leonard into the only territory where he had the advantage – the phone booth.
The lone longshot Brook has against Golovkin is to force him into toe-to-toe range and keep him there for the entire fight, the way Duran did against Leonard in their first encounter. Golovkin might have superior boxing skills and versatility but he has never been dragged into prolonged, frenetic trench warfare. But the term "longshot" cannot be more overstated here because, as Golovkin has proven in the past, if he scores with one or two clean hits, it can be a fight changer, even a fight ender.
Read prediction at: http://peterliminator.blogspot.com/2016/09/gennady-golovkin-vs-kell-brook.html
