Brook fires back at Khan

By Boxing News - 10/01/2015 - Comments

brook5433By Scott Gilfoid: It seems that IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (35-0, 24 KOs) didn’t take too kindly Amir Khan’s recent career advice to him when he told Brook that he needs to “up his game” by fighting better opposition if he wants to face him in 2016.

Brook should have seen this as a helpful bit of advice from Khan, because it’s painfully obvious to many boxing fans that Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn has been putting him in with a lot of weak opposition since he took over as his promoter back in early 2011. Let’s be real about this; Brook has only been matched against one quality fighter in Shawn Porter in my view since Hearn took over as his promoter back in 2011.

The rest of the guys have been fighters like Frankie Gavin, Carson Jones, Jo Jo Dan, Lovemore N’Dou, Alvaro Robles, Matthew Hatton, Rafal Jackiewicz, Hector Saldivia, Vyacheslav Senchenko and Luis Galarza. If you’re a casual fan of the sport, you might think those guys are the cream of the crop, but unfortunately they’re not. Brook has been matched a lot of weak opposition in the last four years, and arguably even weaker opposition before he signed on with Eddie Hearn.

In response to Khan telling him that he needs to fight better opposition, Brook said this on his Twitter:

It seems to me that Brook is going in the wrong direction here. He should be thanking Khan for telling him that he needs to fight better opposition, because Khan is trying to build up their eventual fight in 2016, or whenever he decides to fight Brook. The Brook-Khan fight won’t be a big affair outside of the UK if all Brook is going to be doing is fighting guys like Diego Chaves, Carson Jones, Jo Jo Dan, Frankie Gavin and Hector Saldivia types. Brook needs to fight better opponents like Marcos Maidana, Tim Bradley, Keith Thurman, Errol Spence and give a rematch to Shawn Porter.

This is what Khan originally said to Sky Sports that has got Brook upset enough to fire back at Khan:

“Kell Brook is another good name. In 2016 I’ll think he’ll get that fight,” Khan said to skysports.com.” I don’t know much about Diego Chaves, but I know that he’s lost three of his last five fights. He’s really got to up his game and fight the top guys like I do. I wish him all the best and hope he keeps winning. I want to fight these top guys like Timothy Bradley and Marcos Maidana. That makes our fight bigger.”

I agree with Khan. Diego Chaves has lost 2 out of his last 5 fights with 1 controversial draw against Tim Bradley last December. Chaves could easily have 3 losses in his last 5 fights. There were better fighters for Brook to fight instead of Chaves, such as unbeaten Errol Spence (18-0, 15 KOs). But then again, Brook would have had a high chance of losing to a guy like Spence because he’s arguably a better puncher than Brook and he’s very, very talented. I wonder why Hearn didn’t match Brook against Spence? Is it because Brook would have had a chance of losing to Spence? I don’t know. I just find it funny that Hearn didn’t bother matching Brook up with Spence because it’s a fight that would have been a real problem for Brook if Hearn bothered to make that fight. I don’t think Spence would have turned the fight down, because he’s obviously seen how Brook fights, and I don’t think he would be too worried about him trying to clinch him all night long to keep him from throwing punches.

I think it’s too late for Brook to increase his popularity in the United States in order to make the Khan vs. Brook fight a big deal over there. Even if Hearn does start to match Brook against highly talented opposition instead of the guys he’s been feeding him, it’ll take too many years for Brook to build up a fan base in the U.S.

Brook has only had that one fight against Porter in the U.S that was interesting, and that was an ugly fight with Brook attacking himself to Porter like a giant octopus in every round to keep him from throwing punches. Exciting it was not. If Gennady Golovkin is the gold standard for excitement in boxing, Brook was the equivalent of copper in his clinching performance against Porter. It was the complete opposite of the usual Golovkin performance. For that reason, I don’t see a Khan vs. Brook fight even registering a 1 on the Richter scale in the United States. I think the average in the U.S will take the Khan-Brook fight news the same way that they did the Brook vs. Gavin news. It’s just not a huge fight in the U.S. due to the lack of quality opposition that Brook and Khan have had recently.



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