Today in London, Gennady Golovkin and Kell Brook came together for the final press conference ahead of Saturday night’s big fight, and Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn came away with a little bit of added confidence, due to how he felt Golovkin looked physically. Brook, as fans know, is looking great: “massive, strong and serious,” in the words of Golovkin himself. But Hearn, in speaking with Sky Sports after the press conference had come to an end, said he felt GGG did not look great; in fact, Hearn said his personal opinion is that Triple-G might have struggled a little in getting his weight down to 160.
“I’m going to throw this out there,” the Matchroom boss said. “I didn’t think Gennady Golovkin looked that great. I thought he looked a little bit drawn in the face. They scuttled off after and didn’t want to talk to any of the media. Maybe I’m clutching at straws but I’m going to clutch at them because we need to. We know the task.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKhr4YtI59c
Is it possible GGG has not worked as hard as he normally does for this fight, and has struggled to get his weight down as a result? This would be a surprise, as GGG is, A: ultra-professional (as is his trainer Abel Sanchez) and, B: not all that big for middleweight (recently saying he could still make 154 if he had to for a big fight). Still, Hearn said he has an incling Team-GGG have underestimated Brook and feel they must just turn up to win.
Sanchez stated today how Brook, “will brutally discover it takes more than a ten-week science experiment to topple Gennady Golovkin.” Hearn said such a comment was out of character for Sanchez and that “maybe the pressure is getting to them a bit.”
“They feel they can just rock up to these cities, knock people out, collect the money and off they go,” Hearn went on. “I don’t think it’s going to play out like that. I think they know now it’s serious. I think when the fight was first made they thought it was going to be an easy knock-over job. Now they know they’re in a real fight.”
So, is Hearn correct, or, as he suggested himself, is he merely clutching at those straws? Tomorrow’s official weigh-in will prove most interesting.
