By Scott Gilfoid: Kell Brook (32-0, 22 KOs) still hasn’t even fought IBF welterweight champion Shawn Porter (24-0-1, 15 KOs) for his IBF title and yet Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn can’t keep thinking about a much bigger fight between Brook and Amir Khan that he wants to put together later this year.
Brook faces Porter on August 16th at the StubHub Center in Carson, California. The favorite to win the fight is Porter, who will not only be fighting in front of his own fans, but he’ll also have the advantage in power, inside fighting skills and experience. The deck is heavily stacked in Porter’s favor for this fight, and it’s clearly not looking good for the 28-year-old Brook.
“He’ll [Brook] will be out to California soon, and I believe he’ll be coming back with the world title,” Hearn said. “We’ve been trying to make that fight [Khan vs. Brook] for a while. When Brook beats Porter, that fight is massive.”
It’s too bad that Khan isn’t willing to fight Brook with him coming off of a loss to Porter, because that might be the only way a Khan-Brook fight takes place now. Khan previously has shown zero interest in fighting Brook due to the weak opposition that Brook has faced during his 10-year pro career.
While Khan has been sticking his neck out from time to time during his career to face dangerous opposition like Breidis Prescott, Marcos Maidana, Paulie Malignaggi, Danny Garcia, Zab Judah and Lamont Peterson, Brook has faced arguably inferior opposition. Brook’s best opponents to date are Matthew Hatton, Vyacheslav Senchenko and Carson Jones.
Hearn might need to come up with some other ideas for Brook to try and get a fight against Khan if he comes up short against Porter next month. I mean, I’m sure a Khan-Brook fight could happen in the future, especially if Khan’s career tanks when he eventually steps it up again against a quality fighter instead of the old timers he’s been fighting recently to rebuild his career.
Hearn needs to take some chances with Brook by having him fight the likes of Keith Thurman, Devon Alexander, Ruslan Provodnikov, Lucas Matthysse, Jon Molina, Luis Carlos Abregu and Tim Bradley.
I’ve included some light welterweights among the bunch because I think Hearn may have a difficult time trying to get any of the quality welterweights to bother fighting Brook if he gets soundly beaten by Porter on August 16th. Hearn may need to try and set up Brook vs. Matthysse or Provodnikov if things go badly for him against Porter. But the worst thing that Hearn can do after a Brook loss is to bring him back to the awful opposition he’s faced for the past 10 years.
Hearn needs to keep Brook fighting quality opposition after the Porter fight, even if he gets blasted out in 3-4 rounds. Brook will improve if he keeps fighting high quality opposition, and maybe he can come back from the Porter loss to eventually amount to something in the welterweight division. But he certainly won’t improve if Hearn brings him back to the 3rd tier opposition he built the large portion of his unbeaten resume on.
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