Floyd Mayweather Jr. is picking American Errol “The Truth” Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs) to defeat IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) this Saturday night in their fight on Sky Box Office PPV from Bramall Lane in Sheffield, England. Mayweather still has some doubts about how well the 27-year-old Spence will do against Brook if the fight goes into the later rounds.
Mayweather says that he knows Spence can fight well through 6 rounds, but he’s not sure at all if he’s got the ability to fight at a high level in a long 12 round fight. It’s unclear if Mayweather has heard rumors of Spence gassing out in his sparring sessions.
Jermell Charlo, who Spence sparred with, said that he’s real strong when he’s fresh. Jermell didn’t say that Spence fades as the sparring sessions go into the later rounds, but it appeared that’s the direction he was going in. If Spence cannot fight hard for a full 12 rounds, then it’s going to be an opportunity for Brook to take over the fight if he’s trailing and possibly get a knockout.
“That’s a great match-up,” said Mayweather about the Brook vs. Spence fight next Saturday. “Errol Spence is a hell of a fighter. I have to lean towards Errol Spence. Errol Spence, we’ve never seen him in the late rounds. We’ve seen him fight good in the firs 6. A lot of fighters fight great in the first 6, and I take nothing away from them. You know, he’s a great puncher, a good boxer, but sometimes in fights we’re put in the position and it brings the best out of us. So he’s in a position now where we can take advantage of that and it may bring the best out of him,” said Mayweather.
Spence is facing Brook at the right time in his career with him having lost his last fight to Gennady Golovkin. Brook was injured in that fight in suffering a bad eye injury. It was an injury that required Brook to have surgery on his eye to repair his eye socket. He now has a titanium plate in the socket to strengthen it. Brook claims the eye socket is as good as new. However, Brook will be testing it for the first time when he gets inside the ring with Spence on Saturday. If the eye isn’t as strong as Brook thinks it is, it could be a factor in the outcome of the fight. In addition to the eye injury, Brook put on a lot of weight by overeating after the Golovkin fight. Brook bulked up for the fight with GGG by eating and exercising. But in the months after the fight, Brook got really heavy. His weight looked to be in the 180s and possibly in the 190s. Losing all that weight has been hard for Brook. He’s lost the weight, but we don’t know if he’ll be weakened or not. Brook was on low carb diet during training camp. A diet like that is very likely going to leave Brook at least somewhat weaker than he’s been in his past fights.
Brook has the speed advantage in this fight, but that might not be enough to keep Spence off of him. Brook isn’t a huge puncher. He doesn’t sit down on his shots the way that Spence does. If Brook going to stay in motion most of the fight like he did against Gennady Golovkin, then it’s going to be even tougher for him to generate any power on his shots. That’ll make the job easier for Spence because he tends to walk through fighters that don’t stand their ground and fight him.
It’s difficult to gauge what kind of game plan Brook will have for the Spence fight. Brook had a great game plan for the Shawn Porter fight in 2014. Brook and his trainer Dominic Ingle used strategic holding to keep Porter from fighting on the inside. Brook didn’t allow Porter to fight in close the way he wanted to. At the same time, Brook dominated the fight at the distance. Porter never made any adjustments in the fight, and he ended up losing. If Brook has a strategy to frustrate Spence’s attempts to throw power shots, then it could be an easy fight for Brook.
Spence has looked good in all of his pro fights except for one. Spence struggled badly against Emmanuel Lartei Lartey in their fight in October 2013. Spence was hurt by Lartey during the fight. Lartey was able to catch Spence repeatedly with big shots when he was coming forward. Spence eventually had to change his tactics from slugging to boxing in order to get the victory.
Spence won the fight by an 8 round unanimous decision by the scores 79-73, 79-73 and 79-73. It was far from a dominating performance though for Spence. The fight looked closer than the scores the judges handed down. It was surprising to see Lartey force Spence to box. He made him change his entire game just to get the win.
It was good to see Spence adapt during the fight, because some punchers are unable to make the needed adjustments when they meet someone that is better at slugging than they are. Lartey was definitely better than Spence when it came to punching. In Lartey’s next fight after the Spence match, he lost a close 8 round split decision to Felix Diaz. It was a very close fight. Diaz is the same fighter that was beaten by Terence Crawford last Saturday night.
Brook and Ingle have likely studied Spence vs. Lartey fight to learn what to use to beat him. Lartey created the blueprint in how to beat Spence despite losing the fight. What Lartey was doing was timing Spence’s attacks and nailing him with power shots when he would come on the attack. Lartey was able to catch Spence with some huge shots in that fight. If Brook can do the same thing to Spence, he could beat him and send him home to the U.S a loser.
