By Jimmy Tobin-
American welterweight Errol “The Truth” Spence beat England’s Kell “Special K” Brook into submission before 27,000 or so of Brook’s supporters at Bramall Lane Football Ground in Sheffield, Saturday. In the eleventh round, Brook, feeling himself sufficiently mauled, escaped Spence via the only avenue remaining and kneeled before what looks more and more like the next man to rule the welterweight division.
For no welterweight has the futurity of Spence. Manny Pacquiao remains the greatest 147-pound fighter, easily its most distinguished. Futurity for Pacquiao, however, is almost entirely restricted to his opponents, who do little in defeat to further establish the Filipino’s greatness, but in victory would define their careers. Nor have Top Rank or Pacquiao shown much interest in ratifying the future, even with Terence Crawford ready to become it. And while Keith Thurman, undefeated, with two belts about his waist, is more accomplished than Spence, his ceiling feels lower, a byproduct of facing better opposition perhaps, but also of how he’s fared against it. It is likely that all in the division would be underdogs against Spence, and that he would prove why if granted the opportunity.
Spence was the favorite against Brook too, despite Brook’s credentials and considerable home-canvas advantage. That the fight bore those odds out provided some an opportunity to gripe that Brook, bursting at his welterweight seams, had been undone by the scale; or that he suffered residuals from his ill-fated cash-grab against Gennady Golovkin last September, a fight where Brook’s flashes of success continue to overshadow the substantial punishment he took. Perhaps Brook indeed entered the ring Saturday a ghost of the version that went undefeated in his first 34 fights. But what joylessness there is in such excuses. And how little proof. Better to let Spence have his moment, one that showed ambition and ability, that validated the expectations and intrigue surrounding him. Revisionist history awaits all fighters, but who can be so cynical as to already start tearing down Spence?
Especially considering the quality of his win Saturday. Spence went overseas and won a title by knocking out the defending champion on his home turf in a test that was more fight than formality. Brook had faced grotesque pressure before, using strength, nerve, timing to hold his ground and turn back a raging Shawn Porter. But against Spence, who scrambled Brook’s timing with his jab and who hits with a force and accuracy that Porter cannot match, the Sheffield fighter was quickly drawn into the wrong kind of fight. When it was clear that countering would only leave him pulped (a realization he had before all those malignant knuckles to the gut depleted him) Brook brought the fight to Spence with some success. In doing so he improved his prospects for victory and knockout loss alike, though the longer he employed that strategy the more only one of those outcomes loomed.
It was in Brook’s defiant moments that Spence flashed rare emotion, curling a wry smile at the ends of exchanges, enjoying what he gleaned from Brook’s body. It was here too that Spence quieted the whispers about his chin, taking well a number of stern punches. In a moment reminiscent of Anthony Joshua’s coming of age against Wladimir Klitschko last month, Spence dropped Brook with a barrage in the tenth only to find himself hurt and pursued soon thereafter. But Spence survived, a testament to his toughness and to the dividends of his unrelenting body attack. A note on Spence’s body punching: his left to the body is telegraphed a bit, and yet he throws it with such conviction that it need land only a few times before opponents abandon any notion of countering it, and concern themselves instead with bracing for its impact. It is then, a punch that not only whittles men away, but controls them.
If the ending was anticlimactic that is on Brook, who needed to last but five minutes more, who was defending his title before his people, and who pawed at his damaged eye but suffered no punches in the seconds leading up to his capitulation. This is not a suggest Brook needed to fight on, the decision to continue or not was rightly his to make. There are examples aplenty of fighters risking more under similar circumstances, though, and the reverence they enjoy Brook is not welcome to. Still, there is something satisfying about such stoppages too, where the specter of what the other man might do forces a fighter into the realm of taboo and the fallout that follows.
While he proved much against Brook, whether Spence revealed anything new—beyond a decent chin—depends mostly on how you apprised him and Brook heading into the fight. He is hardly flawless, and that which troubles an earnest pressure fighter will trouble Spence. But like his power, his disposition, his ambition, any weakness in Spence’s game is welcome: it makes him intriguing in a way the last American welterweight to lay claim to the division was not. Like Terence Crawford, Spence is the type of fighter American boxing has been waiting for, except the latter has a more compelling pool of opponents (and Crawford should be encouraged to join those ranks).
The man who guides Spence’s career, long been maligned for squandering resources, may no longer be in the financial position to cradle such an asset. Which means Spence could soon be embarking on the type of run that leaves the last American fighter to lay claim to the division dying for attention.
