Khan should fight Brook, says Hatton

By Boxing News - 08/16/2015 - Comments

hatton939By Scott Gilfoid: Ricky Hatton doesn’t see any point in Amir Khan waiting round before getting the fight against IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook out of the way. Khan says he wants Brook to build up their eventual fight by facing and beating a couple of top fighters in the 147lb division like Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, Marcos Maidana and/or Tim Bradley.

That doesn’t look like it’s ever going to happen unfortunately. Brook just finished fighting Jo Jo Dan and Frankie Gavin in back to back fights. Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn is reportedly interested in matching Brook against Diego Chaves, whose ring record in his last three fights is something like 1-1-1. That’s not too good, is it?

Hatton doesn’t think Khan should wait on the Brook fight. He should take it now, and he believes they can possibly fight each other three times. I don’t know if that’s possible if the first fight ends in a knockout or if one of them gets totally schooled.

“If Khan doesn’t get Mayweather, I think the biggest fight out there is Kell Brook. We could have a trilogy of huge domestic rivalries,” Hatton said via expressandstar.com. “If Carl Froch and George Groves can get 80,000 people to Wembley, don’t tell me Brook versus Khan can’t do the same, every day of the week.”

Let’s be honest about this; Khan is not going to get a fight against Mayweather, so I’m not sure why Hatton is even bothering to mention that scenario as a possibility for Khan. It’s not going to happen.

I can totally understand why Khan wouldn’t want to take the fight with Brook right now because it would be much bigger in the future if Khan waited until Brook built himself up as a star worldwide rather than Khan fighting him now in a fight that would only be big domestically. If Brook were to beat Thurman, Errol Spence, Adrien Broner, Danny Garcia, Lucas Matthysse, Shawn Porter, Marcos Maidana, Tim Bradley, Manny Pacquiao, Terence Crawford, Lamont Peterson and Viktor Postol, Brook would be a huge star by the time that Khan and him faced each other. Even if Brook beat half of those guys, he would still be a huge star. But Brook isn’t a star now, and he’s not going to be a star after he gets done fighting Diego Chaves.

I don’t know how Hatton is in the position to give advice on the subject of Khan and Brook. I mean, Hatton never fought the top welterweight in the UK during his time as the No1 fighter in England by opting not to fight Junior Witter. It was a fight that would have made both fighters tons of money, and instead of Hatton taking it, he opted never to face Witter.

For that reason, it’s kind of hard for me to take Hatton’s advice about what Khan should or shouldn’t do seriously. If Hatton wouldn’t fight Witte in a fight that would have made him a mess of cash, then why should Khan fight Kell Brook? I mean, Khan is only following Hatton’s example.

“If there’s no superstars in America you can go for, it makes sense. And Brook versus Khan wouldn’t be a boring fight,” Hatton said. “If it is a barnstormer, there’s there will be a rematch. It could be Benn and Eubank all over again. Those two didn’t need anyone else, they made each other. If Khan can’t get Mayweather or Pacquiao, that’s the route I would go.”

Hatton seems to be missing the point though. If Khan takes the fight against Brook right now, with Brook’s biggest fights of his career being against the likes of Vyacheslav Senchenko, Matthew Hatton, Jo Jo Dan and Frankie Gavin, Khan would be selling himself short. Brook is still an unknown, and he’s being matched much like how Senchenko was when he held the WBA 147lb title for a couple of years before losing it to Paulie Malignaggi.

Brook is just spinning his wheels right now in terms of picking up new fans outside of the UK, because he’s being matched against too many soft touches. I mean, Brook might be doing great with him building his fan base in the UK, because they might not mind seeing him involved in mismatch after mismatch against guys like Gavin, Jo Jo Dan, Senchenko and Diego Chaves, but fans in the U.S. aren’t showing a lot of interest in this mismatches. In other words, Brook isn’t increasing his status in the boxing world by facing so many weak opponents.

Khan would be selling himself short if he were to face Brook right now because the money he would get in a fight against him now is only a trifle compared to the money he would get a couple of years from now if Brook would start fighting better opposition and get two or three good wins under his belt.

Brook isn’t the one who makes his fights. That job rests on Eddie Hearn’s shoulders. If Hearn thinks it’s a great idea to keep matching Brook against guys like Jo Jo Dan, Frankie Gavin and Diego Chaves, then I’m afraid we may never see a Khan-Brook fight. If Khan is dead serious about not wanting to fight Brook until he proves himself one of these days, then he may be waiting forever for to finally start matching Brook tough, because I don’t see it happening.

In looking at the types of fights that Hearn makes for his fighters, he tends to put together a lot of matches for domestic consumption rather than fights where his fighters are facing top names from outside of the UK. That’s probably why we see guys like Tony Bellew and Nathan Cleverly fighting each other in fights that have no titles on the line rather than one of them stepping up a class and fighting guys like Marco Huck and Yoan Pablo Hernandez for a world title.

Khan-Brook would probably sellout Wembley Stadium, and it might bring in decent PPV numbers in the UK, but you won’t be able to sell that fight in the United Stated on PPV. No way will the American boxing fans pay to see a fight like that. Khan vs. Brook is strictly a fight on either Showtime or one of the free television channels on Premier Boxing Champions on NBC, CBS, Spike TV, or ESPN.

The thing of it is it could be a pay-per-view fight if Brook were to beat the likes of Porter, Thurman, Danny Garcia, Bradley, Maidana, Matthysse, Peterson, and Pacquiao. Khan obviously needs to increase his popularity as well in the United States by him beating those types of fighters. But Khan definitely has a huge head start over Brook in the U.S. because he’s been fighting over there for the past five years. That’s why Brook has a lot further to go than Khan does in building up their fight in the U.S.

If they’re smart, both Khan and Brook will start facing the top welterweights in the division from this point forward for the next two years to build up a fight between them in 2018. Do I think that’s going to happen? Nah, I don’t think so. Brook will likely face Chaves next, and after that guys like Chris Algieri, Luis Collazo, and Leonard Bundu. Khan will probably be looking to fight someone with no punching power so that he can keep winning. The fact that Khan mentioned Lamont Peterson’s name recently gave me the idea that he’s likely to be Khan’s next opponent. Peterson isn’t a big puncher, and he’s got a victory over Khan from 2011 that Khan has never attempted to avenge. It’s a lot easier for Khan to fight Peterson again than to face a dangerous opponent like Thurman, Danny Garcia, Porter or Maidana.



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