By Scott Gilfoid: Well, it doesn’t look like IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook is going to be getting the stadium fight against Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) for June of this year that he’s been blabbering about. Brook and his promoter Eddie Hearn have been hoping that a fight could be arranged against Khan for June at Wembley Stadium in London, UK. However, Khan is now saying he wants to fight the winner of this Saturday’s fight between Danny Garcia and Robert Guerrero.
Those two fighters are battling for the vacant WBC welterweight title. #1 WBC Khan wants to face the winner of the fight so that he can try and pick up the WBC belt. For some reason the World Boxing Council bypassed Khan in order to bless the Garcia-Guerrero fight for the WBC title.
It was a weird move because those two fighters are both ranked below Khan. The winner of the Garcia vs. Guerrero fight will be a paper champion and not considered to be the main guy because of the Mickey Mouse way that the WBC set it up.
“I’m training for, hopefully, the end of March. That’s when I want to fight next,” said Khan to Sy Ahmed. “Opponent-wise…we’re looking at a few names at the moment,” Khan said. “I’ve got a few options there. Look, Danny Garcia is fighting for the WBC title. Even though I’m the No. 1, he’s got the opportunity to fight for it, him being the No 2.”
I don’t know why Khan would even bother wanting to fight the winner of the Garcia-Guerrero fight. It’s just going to put a heavy burden on Khan if Garcia is the one that emerges the winner of that fight. Khan already was stopped in the 4th round by Garcia in 2012, and I can’t picture Khan being able to avenge that loss.
Garcia hits too hard. It would be a very, very winnable fight for Khan if he could take the occasional hard shots that Garcia would land. Khan has the better boxing skills, hand speed, mobility and athleticism than Garcia. Khan is the overall much better fighter than Garcia when you take out his chin problems. If Khan can box smart and limit the amount of heavy shots he’s hit with by Garcia, then he can definitely win the fight. I just don’t know that Khan will be able to take more than a small handful of heavy left hooks from Garcia before he gets knocked out.
“I think I’ll get my chance to win that title against him and have that rematch which I’ve been looking forward to for a long, long time,” Khan said. “So hopefully the Danny Garcia rematch is a fight that can happen this summer – if he wins that is. I mean the winner of Guerrero and Garcia, the winner I’ll fight – so that’s good,” Khan said.
It’s unknown who Khan will be fighting in March. Whoever it is, he’s going to need to think about naming the opponent soon if they want to build up the fight. I can’t imagine Khan fighting anyone good at this point because he hasn’t fought since last May when he struggled to beat Chris Algieri.
Kell Brook is going to have to face someone else in the summer rather than Khan. Brook is saying that he’ll be fighting a big name in the summer. I bet. The only decent name on Brook’s entire resume is Shawn Porter, and Brook clinched nonstop to win an ugly, ugly decision in their fight in 2014. I’ve never seen a fighter clinch as much as Brook did and not get points taken away. The referee that worked the Brook-Porter fight was really casual in terms of enforcing the clinching. Porter was kind of left out there on his own in having to deal with a fighter that just clinching all night long. It would have been interesting if Porter had started bending the rules himself by landing low blows at a high clip in each round. I would have liked to have seen whether those would have been stopped and led to penalization’s. I don’t know who Brook can face in terms of a big name for the summer. I doubt it will be Tim Bradley, and it definitely won’t be Manny Pacquiao. It probably won’t be Keith Thurman. Those are essentially the only big names in the 147lb division right now. I hope Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn doesn’t bring in 44-year-old Shane Mosley as the big name that Brook is talking about. That would be hilarious, but so, so predictable.
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