Hearn keeping June 13th open for Brook vs. Khan fight

By Boxing News - 03/28/2015 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn has the June 13th date open for his fighter IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (33-0, 22 KOs) for him to face Amir Khan (30-3, 19 KOs) if he can get Khan to agree to take the fight.

Hearn has his doubts that the 28-year-old Khan will say yes to a fight against Brook, because he believes that Khan is afraid of losing the fight to Brook.

Khan obviously is hoping to get a fight against Manny Pacquiao and/or Floyd Mayweather Jr, because those bouts will give a lot of cash. Khan would be hitting the jackpot with a fight against either of those guys.

It doesn’t matter if Khan gets beaten badly. He’d make a lot of money, and become better known with the casual boxing fans. It would obviously be better if Khan beat them, or at least fought them competitively. But he’d make out big time if he could get a big money fight against one of them.

“The bottom line is Amir Khan knows that Kell Brook beats him and they don’t want to take that fight,” Hearn said via the BBC.co.uk. “They want the big name, I understand, but why wouldn’t you take Kell Brook when you know it’s the biggest pay day out there for you, he has a world title and you can give the British fans exactly what they want. It just doesn’t make sense so we move on. We look at the likes of Marquez and Rios.”

Hearn says that Khan told them that Brook needed to fight a big name first, and that he needed to capture a world title. However, now that Brook is the IBF welterweight champion, he’s still being ignored by Khan.

Brook still hasn’t faced a big name though. He did beat Shawn Porter last year in August to win the IBF 147 pound title, but Porter isn’t a big name. Brook won the title, but he won it against a lesser name and he didn’t do it in an impressive fashion. I mean, I had Porter winning the fight, but it was clearly a very close fight.

“We’ve called for that fight for years and years and Amir Khan has said ‘go and fight someone good, go and win a world title,” Hearn said.

I really don’t see Khan agreeing to a fight against Brook until he’s got nothing else available with his career. Khan may end up waiting too long to take the fight though, because if he gets whipped by someone along the way, he won’t get the Mayweather or Pacquiao fight, and the Brook match-up won’t be the fight that it would be if Khan had taken the fight while the two of them were still top fighters.

Hearn thinks that a Khan-Brook fight would be a bout that would bring in 80,000 fans. I don’t agree.

“Now we sit with Amir Khan this summer with no opponent, no big plans and with a date at Wembley of June 13th when Kell Brook could fight Amir Khan in another 80,000 blockbuster but Amir Khan doesn’t want to know,” Hearn said.

Hearn should just focus on matching Brook against guys that are actually good fighters instead of all the soft guys he’s been putting him in with. Putting Brook in with Brandon Rios isn’t going to prove anything because Rios has been beaten again and again, and he’s got a couple of controversial wins against Diego Chaves and Richard Abril that he should have lost.

Marquez, 41, has a knee problem and I don’t see it as a fight that would prove anything. If this was Marquez in his early 30s or in his 20s, then I could see the fight as having some meaning. But fighting him now will just make Hearn and Brook look like cherry pickers.

Hearn really needs to match Brook against Keith Thurman. That’s a fight that Thurman really wants, but thus far he’s not seen any move by Hearn to try and make that fight. So it’s kind of weird that Hearn jumps on Khan for not wanting to fight Brook when Hearn won’t bother putting Brook in with Thurman. Hearn should put Brook in with Thurman or Marcos Maidana if he’s so confident about his fighter.



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