#8 IBF Carson Jones (35-9-3, 25 KO’s) must have pulled out some of his old Rocky tapes to get one Ivan Drago’s lines to use on #1 IBF, welterweight contender Kell Brook (29-0, 19 KO’s) at their final press conference to hype their rematch on Saturday night at the Craven Park Stadium, Yorkshire, UK.
Jones said “There’s going to be a lot of sad faces after the fight guaranteed. You’re going to be one of them. If he dies, he dies.”
Brook didn’t have much to say other than “It’s going to be a completely different fight [from last time].”
If boxing fans remember their fight last year in July, Brook fought well for six rounds, ran out of gas and appeared to lose the last six rounds of the fight and was staggering in the 12th. You can make a pretty darn good argument that the final round should have been a 10-8 round given how badly Brook was hurt in the fight.
The fight should have been scored a draw, but Brook got the win by a 12 round majority decision. One judge had it scored 114-114. Brook had his nose rearranged in the fight and was bleeding all over the pace. Afterwards he and his promoter Eddie Hearn made excuses about Brook not being in the best shape. He’s now working harder on his conditioning and is said to have fixed his stamina problems.
We’ll see if that’s true on Saturday night when the two fighters face each other. Brook has fought once since that fight, stopping little known fighter Hector David Saldivia by a 3rd round TKO last year in October in an IBF eliminator bout. Salidivia looked terrible and it surprising that the IBF had him ranked in their top 5. They don’t anymore, but they did then and it made it easy for Brook to lock himself in as the mandatory for IBF champion Devon Alexander.