Dominic Ingle stopped the fight, not at the behest of HBO, but on behalf of the fighter he was hired, at least in part, to protect?
?If you get belted and see three fighters through a haze, go after the one in the middle. That?s what ruined me?going after the other two guys.??Max Baer
Former pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather offers advice without prompting. His opinions vary, according to subject and audience, and accordingly sometimes need to be taken with a grain of salt. But when it comes to boxing he knows what of he speaks.
Having watched welterweight Kell Brook?s noble but doomed effort against middleweight Gennady Golovkin at London?s O2 Arena, Mayweather, like the rest of us, was impressed with Brook?s Sisyphean effort.
But, he told Fighthype.com, ?If I was in Kell Brook?s corner, I wouldn?t have stopped the fight. It was a very, very close fight, some had ?GGG? ahead, some had Kell Brook ahead. I probably had Kell Brook ahead a little bit.?
I also had Brook ahead, but when his trainer Dominic Ingle threw in the towel in the fifth round, the tide had turned and Brook was getting pummeled on the ropes.
Brook later said he was seeing triple and had his eye socket fractured early in the fight. In light of that injury, in light of that knowledge, the stoppage now seems less premature than merciful.
But if Mayweather was working Brook?s corner that night the fight would have continued.
?In the sport of boxing, it?s about taking risks,? said Mayweather. ?I respect Kell Brook for taking a risk, going up two weight classes, now we?re waiting for Triple G to go up and take risks like every other champion.?
Assuming Mayweather doesn?t do irony, it sounds as if the man who declared himself ?The Best Ever,? despite evidence to the contrary, expects Golovkin to do what Mayweather himself failed to do, such as ?taking risks?like every other champion.?
Mayweather believes Golovkin gets a pass from HBO. But the man in Brook?s corner stopped the fight, not at the behest of HBO, aka The Evil Empire, but on behalf of the fighter he was hired, at least in part, to protect, both from Golovkin and himself.
?I told him (Dominic Ingle) in round two that my eye was broken and that I couldn?t see so he was aware of what was going on,? Brook told Sky Sports. ?He?s obviously seen me taking shots, couldn?t see, and he kept seeing me trying to refocus my eye. That?s when he got in and waved it off.
?Looking back now, at the time I did want to fight because I am a fighter, but in the long run the doctors have said if I had carried on getting bigger shots on the eye, I could have ended up being blind.
?We live to fight another day. It was definitely the right choice because I could hardly see in the fight. I?ve got an operation this Friday. I went down to see the surgeons and they wanted to plan it right and look into everything.
?They?re looking to put a titanium plate in the eye but they?re looking at other materials. They?re not rushing it but it looks like this Friday. I?m more scared of getting put to sleep than I was getting in with Golovkin.? Follow us on Twitter@boxing_com to continue the discussion
