Gennady Golovkin posts 23rd straight knockout when Kell Brook corner throws in towel

Despite a game effort by welterweight Kell Brook through four rounds Saturday at London, his trainer threw in the towel following a furious attack from Gennady Golovkin in the fifth.

The victory, Golovkin’s 23rd consecutive knockout, was his 17th straight middleweight title triumph in defense of his International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Council belts.

Brook (36-1), after complaining of blurred vision that caused him to see “three or four” Golovkins following a hard second-round punch, was absorbing some heavy punches from Golovkin in the fifth when his trainer, Dominic Ingle, stood on the ring apron and intervened, referee Marlon Wright waving off the action to Brook’s wonder and dismay.

“Absolutely, a fight of this magnitude should’ve carried on,” Brook said on the telecast. “I wanted to carry on. Knock me out.

“I’m frustrated. I had more to give. I believe I would’ve took over. I was getting more and more confident.”

Brook was hospitalized after the bout and a fractured orbital bone was discovered, requiring surgery, according to Golovkin promoter Tom Loeffler

Brook, the IBF’s welterweight champion, was rocked by a first-round punch that Golovkin said made it clear to him that “he’s not a middleweight, this is not his division.”

But Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) and his Big Bear-based trainer Abel Sanchez rated his own showing no better than a “ four.”

Brook snapped Golovkin’s head back with a second-round uppercut to clearly win that round, and rallied impressively in the third and fourth rounds to strike Golovkin with clean punches.

“He touched me, I don’t feel it,” Golovkin said. “I was like, ‘G, take your time, he’s broken.’

“From the second round, I knew, this is not boxing, this is a street fight. Today, I was not boxing world class. This was like sparring.”

Golovkin alluded to the idea last week that he wouldn’t mind appearing somewhat vulnerable, given the interest in a showdown against Mexico’s Canelo Alvarez that Alvarez, 25, has said he does not expect to take until September 2017 as he finds comfort fighting at 160 pounds while Golovkin, 34, ages.

Loeffler said, “The guys who don’t want to get in the ring with Gennady saw him get hit tonight. Maybe that’ll inspire them to sign a contract now.”

“I don’t look good, he has interest,” Golovkin told The Times in Big Bear in reference to Alvarez.

Sanchez said his fighter “allowed himself to get in a bar fight. He was trying too hard to knock Kell out. I told [Golovkin] it’s a 12-round fight, [to] beat on him.”

Golovkin clearly pressed the action to start the final three rounds, hammering Brook in the fifth with blows that caused the challenger, bleeding under the right eye, to raise his arms as if the punishment wasn’t having effect.

Some hard rights on Brook’s head followed, though, and his corner sensed it might be time to end the well-paid experiment and return to full health in a lighter weight class, with Brook saying he’d like to “clean out” the 154-pound division.

“The corner did the right thing. He was taking too many clean shots and I think something’s wrong with the right eye, those heavy hands could’ve hurt him permanently,” Sanchez said. “Getting hit with too many clean shots is dangerous. We knew over time we’d break him down.”

Brook agreed to the Golovkin assignment after his promoter Eddie Hearn’s middleweight Chris Eubank Jr. balked at the same financial terms.

Golovkin is expected to return to the ring Nov. 26 on HBO, possibly in Los Angeles.

Although Golovkin expressed continued interest in adding a fourth middleweight belt by fighting England’s World Boxing Organization champion Billy Joe Saunders, Loeffler said he’ll pursue the World Boxing Assn. mandatory challenge of co-champion Daniel Jacobs.

“That’s a great matchup we hope to put together,” Loeffler said after Jacobs scored five knockdowns Friday in his seventh-round technical knockout of Southland fighter Sergio Mora in Pennsylvania.

HBO is obligated to provide Golovkin a third fight in 2016, but the network has been hamstrung by spending restrictions this year that led to Manny Pacquiao’s Nov. 5 bout becoming a self-distributed venture by his promoter, Top Rank.

HBO balked at the licensing fee that could’ve been used for the July 23 junior-welterweight title unification bout between Terence Crawford and Viktor Postol that was placed on HBO pay-per-view.

So it might be a long shot whether the network spends the money on a Golovkin-Jacobs matchup.

Pugmire reported from Los Angeles.