English welterweight boxer Kell Brook (36-2, 25 KOs) lost his IBF title to Errol Spence Jr. (22-0, 19 KOs) in Saturday’s main event showdown in Brook’s hometown of Sheffield. It was his first loss as a welterweight, having previously suffered a TKO defeat to Gennady Golovkin in an unexpected middleweight championship opportunity.
When Brook lost to GGG, his corner threw in the towel as his right eye was getting progressively worse and he was taking heavy punishment. He needed surgery to repair his fractured orbital bone.
While the right eye held up just fine against Spence, it was the left eye that was badly damaged. He went down on one knee without being punched in the 11th round, and while he rose at the count of 9, referee Howard Foster called the fight off. Now for the second time in less than a year, Brook is facing surgery for the exact same injury, but on his other eye. (Via Sky Sports)
“They kept me in until about 3am. I had a CT scan on my eye and the eye is broken again, same as the Golovkin one, so, maybe surgery again.
“I’m devastated. I knew from round seven that the eye had gone and progressively as the rounds went on. I tried to get through the fight and it kept going double vision and then coming back into line.
“In the later rounds 10 and 11, especially 11th round, it stuck there and that’s why I went down on one knee and I remember the surgeon saying to me after the Golovkin fight if you would have gone another round or so you could be blind so I’ve got that going through my mind as well.
“I’m in my own city, I’m in Sheffield. I wear my heart on my sleeve. There were many things going through my mind but I remember thinking I live to fight another day.”
MMA fans may remember when Roger Huerta broke both orbital bones in his Bellator loss to Eddie Alvarez, but I certainly can’t recall an instance where a mixed martial artist or a boxer had one orbital bone break in one fight, then had the other one break in the next fight.
As far as what’s next for his career, Brook is looking at moving up to junior middleweight (154 lbs), having cut down from 173 lbs to make 147 for the Spence fight.
About the author
