Dave Oakes previews Friday night's welterweight match-up between Kell Brook and Krzysztof Bienias .  Yesterday Dave previewed the other big fight on the show, between Paul Smith and Tony Dodson.

The main support for the Smith v Dodson fight is the eliminator for the WBO welterweight title between Sheffield’s Kell Brook and Poland’s Krzysztof Bienias.

Brook, 20-0 (13 KO’s), is now at the stage of his career where he’s ready leave the ‘hot prospect’ tag behind and should be looking to make inroads at world level. He’s still a few fights away from facing the major players in the division and he must ensure that he’s ready to take the step up to that level when the opportunity arises.

Brook is a confident, and slightly cocky, heavy-handed fighter from Brendan Ingle’s Wincobank Gym, which has inevitably led to comparisons with Ingle’s most famous protégé Naseem Hamed. There are definitely similarities between the pair – punches from unusual angles, low held hands and upper body movement for defence and chilling knockout power in both hands. Although I do feel Brook’s style, whilst still sticking to the philosophies of the Ingle way, is slightly more orthodox than that of Naseem’s - his jab is very solid and he doesn’t tend to load up with the big punches like Hamed did.

The best performances of Brook’s career have come against his hardest opponents; he out-boxed Barrie Jones before stopping him in the seventh to claim the British title before making successful defences against Kevin McIntyre (KO1), Stuart Elwell (KO2) and Michael Lomax (KO3). The way he destroyed McIntyre was particularly impressive, it was expected to be a hard fight but Brook jumped on the Scotsman from the opening bell and had him down and out inside two minutes.

Bienias, 39-3 (16 KO’s), is seven years Brook’s senior and is vastly more experienced. Two of his three defeats have come in European title tilts against world class operators Oktay Urkal and Junior Witter. He was soundly out-boxed by Urkal, whilst Witter blew him away inside two rounds, though he was still on his feet when the referee stopped the fight. He’s gone unbeaten in the five years since the Witter defeat, albeit against opposition that was either poor or average.

Bienias is usually sturdy but it remains to be seen how he’ll cope with the power of Brook, who can take an opponent out at any time and is particularly dangerous early on. Ring rust may be an issue for Brook, he’s been out of the ring for eight months due to illness and injury and it may take him a round or two to regain his timing.

I feel that Brook is a level above Bienias and should beat him easily, Bienias should be tough enough to last a few rounds but I can’t see him going past the eighth.

The third title bout of the evening sees Tony ‘Bomber’ Bellew take on Atoli Moore for the vacant Commonwealth light-heavyweight title. Bellew is building a reputation as one of the hardest punchers in British boxing; he’s unbeaten in twelve fights with eight of those wins coming inside the distance.

Bellew can be rash at times and his defence is still a work in progress, but he has a crowd pleasing style and is a likeable fella outside the ring. If he can learn to iron out the few faults in his style, then he’s got the ability, punch power and charisma to become a star and potential world champion.

Moore is a bit of a mystery, like a lot of Ghanaians his record is dubious to say the least. He says his record is 10-0 (6 KO’s) but not all of those fights have been officially recorded and you have to wonder about the legitimacy of some of them.

Bellew looked considerably bigger than Moore at the weigh in and I get the feeling he’s going to blow away the Ghanaian very quickly.

Enzo Maccarinelli continues his rehabilitation against Zoltan Czekus of Hungary. I don’t know a great deal about Czekus but Maccarinelli should be winning these type of fights if he’s to get back into the mix at title level.

Two more boxers to keep an eye out for are Stephen Smith and Ronnie Heffron. Smith, the brother of show headliner Paul, is unbeaten in nine fights and shouldn’t have any trouble in stopping Jason Thomas. Heffron won on his pro debut last time out and faces journeyman Karl Taylor over four rounds. Both boxers look to have bright futures.

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