By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (33-0, 22 KOs) will be in Las Vegas, Nevada on the night that WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (47-0, 26 KOs) takes on Manny Pacquiao on May 2nd. Brook will scouting out Mayweather, who he’s hoping to fight later this year.
It’s a nice thing for Brook to be hoping for, but it’s not likely to happen due to him not being a widely known fighter in the United States. Mayweather is at the point in his career where he wants to maximize the amount of money he makes with the last handful of fights he has left in his career.
Fighting Brook doesn’t make a lot of sense, because it’s a fight that would bring Maywweather far less money than he’d make in fights against Pacquiao, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez or Miguel Cotto. Heck, Mayweather could fight Gennady Golovkin and still likely bring in far more pay-per-view buys than a fight against Brook. Golovkin is well known in the U.S, Brook is not.
“Me and Eddie Hearn will be out there in Vegas, enjoying ourselves, watching that fight,” Brook said via skysports.com. “I want Mayweather. I want the best pound-for-pound fighter that everyone has titled him as. I want to fight the very best – I’m in my prime, I’m unbeaten, I’m world champion. I want momentum; I want big fights in the summer.”
Whether Brook gets a big fight this summer will depend on if Amir Khan chooses to fight him or not, because I see that as being Brook’s only chance for a big fight.
No way do I see him getting a fight against Manny Pacquiao, and definitely not against Mayweather. The reason why is because Brook hasn’t been fighting the guys that he needed to face in order to increase his popularity in the U.S.
Yes, Brook fought Shawn Porter last year in August, but it was an ugly performance by Brook due to all the clinching he did. It was a chance for Brook to win fans, but instead he failed to impress because of the constant holding he was doing in the fight to shutdown Porter’s offense.
Brook’s next fight against Jo Jo Dan (34-2, 18 KOs) on March 28th won’t do much for Brook’s popularity in the U.S, because Jo Jo Dan isn’t a well-known fighter among the casual fans. I know Brook is just getting his mandatory defense out of the way, but it’s not the right opponent for him to be chirping about wanting a Mayweather fight later this year. I mean, you don’t go from fighting Jo Jo Dan, a guy with an inflated ranking, to a fight against Mayweather.
That’s not how it goes. Jo Jo Dan was twice beaten by Selcuk Aydin. The World Boxing Association must have their reason for giving Dan a No.1 ranking, but I can’t understand it. He’s beaten obscure guys his entire career, and then he loses to Aydin twice. For Brook to get a fight against Mayweather, I think he’s going to need to need to fight the likes of Marcos Maidana, Khan, and face Porter in a rematch with Brook not holding all night long like he did last August against him.
Comments are closed.