For the last two weeks, former world champion Kell Brook (36-2, 25 KOs) has been taking a lot of heat for the way his recent title defense played.

Back on May 27th, before 27,000 fans at Bramall Lane in Sheffield, Brook was stopped in the eleventh round by mandatory challenger Errol Spence (22-0, 19 KOs).

The fight was very competitive, until Spence began to take over the contest around the eight or ninth round. Brook went down in the tenth, but then took a voluntary knee in the eleventh for the full count.

For Brook, it was his second loss in a row. And the second where the end came within the distance.

Last September at the O2 Arena in London, Brook was stopped in five rounds when he moved up by two weight divisions to challenge middleweight king Gennady Golovkin. In a similar manner to the Spence contest, the action was competitive early on and Golovkin began to take over in the fourth. Once Brook began to take punishment and wasn't doing much to fight back - his trainer threw in the towel.

Brook suffered a fractured right orbital bone against GGG, and that's why his offense dwindled. And against Spence he fractured his left orbital bone, which caused an issue with his vision and led him to make a decision to take a knee to end the fight in round eleven.

Spence's head trainer, Derrick James, has praised Brook for his effort and fighting spirit in the contest.

"Kell Brook showed me a lot," James told Fighthype.com. "He is a real man because any other guy would have quit way before he did. Errol was hitting him with some real hard shots and he basically took it for as long as he could take it. That's what people don't understand.

"I don't think any of those other top guys would have been able to take the shots like that. He was strong, he was more durable and a lot bigger, and he was more motivated to try and keep his title. But when you get your orbital bone broken or your cheek bone broken or whatever the case may be people don't really understand."