Liam Smith learns that courage and heart is not enough

Twice in two weeks British world champions - Kell Brook and Liam Smith - have stepped up to the elite level and come up short. Of the two a case can be made that Kell Brook does belong at the elite level, just not at middleweight; and certainly not at middleweight against the machine that is Gennady Golovkin. The Sheffield welterweight world champion's next outing at light middle will prove beyond doubt if he's as good as many of us believe he is when up against the likes of Canelo Alvarez - assuming, of course, that the Mexican stays at 154lbs to defend the WBO belt he just won from Britain's Liam Smith, against whom he looked superb, securing a 9th round stoppage on the back of a vicious left uppercut to the body.

Liam Smith, everyone agrees, is a solid fighter - brave, durable, and tough. However at the elite level those qualities by themselves are not enough. And this is where we must be honest and acknowledge that the sport in Britain suffers from a training culture that places an emphasis on conditioning at the expense of craft, skill, and the finer points of a sport that when it comes down to it has more in common with chess than chequers.

Let's look at Smith's style, which mimics almost to a tee every one of Joe Gallagher's fighters. He carries a high, tight guard, wherein his hands never leave the side of his forehead apart from when he throws a shot, typically leading with a stiff, single jab, which he throws at the same speed and with the same force. He jabs to the body but normally to the head, and when he let's more than one shot go it is usually a left-right followed by a left hook to the body, perhaps finishing with a left hook to the head. There is very little variety - either in power, speed, or range, which makes him easy to read and anticipate. At the highest level a fighter needs to vary the positioning of his hands and feet in order to confuse his opponent by constantly changing the range and distance - i.e. holding his hands away from his face shortens the distance, while also enabling him to move easier from the waist, thus allowing him to generate more power and torque in his shots, and also to roll under and slip any incoming.

The point is that a tight guard is far too restrictive and inhibits a fighter's ability to relax and throw fluid and fast combinations. It also leaves the body exposed, something that Alvarez was able to take full advantage of against Liam Smith.

Ultimately, boxing involves the generation of kinetic energy throughout a given combination of punches, with each punch adding power to the next. Joe Gallagher is a trainer who believes in a very basic style that involves very little head movement, minimal use of angles, and ring craft. His fighters arrive in top condition and rely on their superior fitness and work rate to wear down their opponents. It is a style and ethos that while lacking finesse has proved successful over the years. But it is clearly lacking when it comes up against elite opposition such as Canelo Alvarez in the case of Liam Smith, or Carl Frampton in the case of Scott Quigg.

Alvarez is a counter puncher for whom Liam Smith was tailor-made. It was staggering to see Smith throwing single jabs most of the fight while standing still, thus reducing him to stationery target against whom his opponent couldn't miss. When fighting a counter-puncher you either have to double and triple up the jab in order to deny them the space to counter while forcing them onto the back foot, or you counter the counter. What you never do is throw single jabs while standing still.

When it comes to Joe Gallagher, there's an argument to be made that his stable is too big to allow him to spend enough time on any one fighter imparting anything more than the aforementioned basics. While he is able to get them fit - and let's be honest, getting a fighter in shape is a prerequisite and a given - they all come in at the lowest common denominator in terms of style. Maybe Gallagher is incapable of teaching his fighters the finer aspects of the craft. If so it is no criticism, as he merely joins a long line of British and European trainers for whom boxing is more bludgeon than ballet.

What we saw play out when Liam Smith met Canelo Alvarez was more than a clash of styles, it was a clash of cultures. The fact that Britain currently boasts more world champions than at any other time in the history of the sport, this is not so much a testament to the quality of British boxing as an indictment of a sport that has become to so stacked with organizations and belts that the title of world champion has become increasingly devalued.

While the heart and courage Liam Smith showed against Canelo was commendable, his lack of ring craft and style was exposed. It is why he lost and lost handsomely against a fighter who himself was exposed against Floyd Mayweather Jr.

It's true what they say. In this sport it's about levels.

Brook makes epic attempt against GGG but size matters

If ever a national anthem was suited to a fighter it is the Kazakh anthem that booms out before a Gennady Golovkin fight. It conjurs up the image of a column of tanks coming over the hill, guns blazing as they sweep all before them. The fighter known as GGG has a style redolent of said column of tanks on the offensive - merciless, relentless, and unstoppable.

Kell Brook did everything he could to withstand the middlewight champion's assault, but apart from a tremendous second round he spent the fight backpedaling like a man trying but failing to ward off a swarm of angry bees. GGG is every bit as fearsome and machine-like as his astonishing KO percentage suggests, a fighter who combines ferocious intensity with the ability to generate truly frightening torque behind his shots. Even though Brook peppered his opponent with the kind of fast and accurate combinations Golovkin hadn't encountered since he fought Willie Monroe, there was an inevitability about the result from as early as the opening salvoes of the first round, when the bigger man maneuvered Brook onto the ropes and rocked him with a thunderous left hook upstairs. It was probably this punch that fractured Brook's right eye socket, the injury which forced Dominic Ingle to throw in the towel in the second half of the fifth to prevent his fighter taking any more punishment. In doing so, Ingle's courage and compassion outside the ring matched Brook's courage inside, given the chorus of boos that greeted his intervention.

From the moment this fight was announced we knew that Brook's chance of climbing the mountain that lay in front of him would come down to his ability to hurt Golovkin with his shots while being deal with the Kazakh's incoming. Despite GGG's dismissal of Brook's power in his post-fight interviews, the IBF welterweight world champion undoubtedly rocked him with an uppercut in a second round that has to count as one of the most superb comeback rounds ever staged by a fighter given the torrid time Brook endured in the first round, previously described. It even allowed us to believe that, yes, maybe we were about to witness one of the most outstanding achievements in the ring boxing has ever produced, up there with a young Cassius Clay impetuously taking on and defeating Sonny Liston in Miami to shake up the world and claim his first world title in 1964; up there with Sugar Ray Leonard's comeback after three years out of the ring to bamboozle Mavellous Marvin Hagler in 1987; and up there, of course, with Ken Buchanan's epic performance to take the world lightweight title from Panama's Ismael Laguna over fifteen brutal rounds in the crippling heat of Puerto Rico in 1970.

But when it came to Brook's attempt to join this illustrious company the simple but iron logic implicit in the mantra that a good big man will always beat a good smaller man prevailed. Golovkin simply had too much artillery for Brook to cope with, and though immediately after the fight he was clearly upset with Dominic Ingle's decision to end the fight, in time he will surely come round to accepting that his trainer did the right thing at the right time.

Many fans, and not a few commentators, trainers and other fighters, had from the outset dismissed the fight as a mismatch due to the weight difference involved. But any criticism in this regard should not fall on the shoulders of Brook, Golovkin, or their respective teams. It should fall on the shoulders of the so-called elite fighters in and around their respective weight divisions who have steadfastly refused to take on the challenge posed by both men in the ring. It reflects the inherent weakness of the business-side of the sport, especially when compared to MMA, the fact that in too many instances fighters and their managers and promoters have sought to over-protect their assets rather than risk them. There is no shame in losing in the ring, none whatsoever, so why this consistent reluctance to risk defeat for the sake of both the sport and your own reputation as an athlete willing to test yourself against the very best?

That being said, the courage required to stand in front of the steam train that is Gennady 'GGG' Golovkin is of the uncommon kind, which is why the plaudits that have fallen on Kell Brook in both the run-up and aftermath of the fight are entirely justified. He risked all in order to win all and his failure to succeed, given the manner of his performance, has increased rather than diminished his stature. Clearly he will not be fighting at welterweight again, which immediately opens up the tantalising prospect of future fights against the likes of Canelo Alvarez, Miguel Cotto, and Britain's Liam Smith.

As for Golovkin, he says that he wants Billy Joe Saunders' WBO middleweight belt in order to unify the title. There is also the possibility of finally making a fight against Chris Eubank Jr happen. However it has to be said, after watching him take apart a previously undefeated Kell Brook, that neither Saunders nor Eubank Jr will be entitled to feel confident of doing what 36 others have thus far failed to when it comes to put a dent in the Kazakh's armour.

Sheffield's Kell Brook proved against GGG that in boxing courage and skill isn't everything. Size really does matter.