It was a great night in Sheffield when the hometown boy Kell Brook made his junior middleweight debut in impressive fashion stopping Sergey Rabchenko in two rounds.
Brook (37-2, 26 KOs) suffered two bad eye injuries in his last two fights, he lost both and many fans called for his retirement.
His first loss was in 2016, it was a huge step up in weight jumping from 147 pounds where he owned the IBF welterweight crown, to face the 160 pound power punching middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin.
He gave a great effort Golovkin but his corner threw in the towel because of the damage he took to his eye socket which eventually wound up fractured.
After he recovered from eye surgery he took a year off and he decided to drop back down to 147 pounds to defend his IBF title against undefeated American puncher Errol Spence Jr., he started off strong in the fight and was able to handle the power of Spence but during the later rounds he got tired and Spence fractured Brook’s other eye socket causing him to quit in the eleventh round.
Brook suggested that the weight cut hurt him against Spence, his stamina suffered and he felt it was a bad decision to take that fight knowing how tough it was to make the weight.
He made his junior middleweight debut tonight at the Sheffield Arena, Sheffield, England in front of a packed hometown crowd against Belarus fighter Sergey Rabchenko and the fight was over quickly.
The first round was all Brook landing and boxing beautifully, after that he finished off his opponent in the second round rocking him and dropping him with a flurry of punches, the ref called the fight off as a hurt Rabchenko tried to get up to beat the ten count.
After his outing tonight, Brook is looking forward to finally fighting long time rival and new Matchroom boxing stablemate Amir Khan possibly at 154 pounds. Khan must first get by Phil Lo Greco in April.
