By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook seems to have taken the news pretty well of Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) passing him up for WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs). Brook, 29, had been hoping to face Khan on June 4, in a nice paying fight at Wembley Stadium in London, UK.
Instead of Brook getting the Khan fight, he is left with nothing. All he can hope for is maybe his promoter Eddie Hearn setting up a unification fight against WBC welterweight champion Danny Garcia instead for the summer. That is not a Wembley Stadium type of fighter, however.
Brook says he is not sure if Khan is cashing out with the fight against the much bigger 25-year-old Canelo Alvarez. Never the less, Brook does not see it as a winnable fight for Khan.
Brook does think it is a smart move for Khan because it is one where Khan will not get a great deal of criticism should he lose to the bigger Canelo. If Khan gets stretched in that fight, then he has a built in excuse by being able to say that he was fighting a guy two divisions above him and much heavier.
“I don’t know if he’s cashing himself in or what but I don’t believe he thinks he can win. That’s me being honest. He’ll lose in that fight,” Brook said to skysports.com. “They [Khan]can always come back down and fight the welterweights of the world. If he’d got in with me, which we all expected, I’d definitely end his career.”
Brook should not get too ahead of himself here. He might not get a fight against Khan after the Canelo fight. Let’s look at it this way; if Khan beats Canelo, then he’ll surely look to face the redheaded Mexican star for a second time in a huge money fight. Khan is not going to backtrack and move down to welterweight to fight Brook under those circumstances. That would be a stupid and self-defeating move by Khan if he did that. Khan will either fight Canelo a second time or face Gennady Golovkin in a pay-per-view fight on HBO that would likely bring in huge PPV numbers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27VH8lzzAmg
If Khan loses to Canelo, then I can see Khan opting to try to fight Danny Garcia for his WBC title. I think Brook is a low priority type of fighter for Khan. I think Khan will eventually fight Brook, but only after Brook starts taking losses to other fighters. Khan will then realize that he must face Brook before he loses value completely and slips into the pack with the other hungry contenders in the 147lb division.
“Him fighting at middleweight against Canelo, he can always say ‘the guy was too big for me. I thought this and I thought that.’ He can come up with that and drop back down so it’s win-win for Khan I think,” Brook said. “It’s [Khan v Brook] always going to be on the table. It’s a good move he’s done. With the demand we still have to sit down and talk.”
Brook will be fighting on March 26 against #1 IBF welterweight contender Kevin Bizier at the Motorpoint Arena in Sheffield, UK. This is a terrible fight for Brook and will interest nobody at all. After this mismatch, Brook really needs to think seriously about putting some heat under his promoter Eddie Hearn’s backside to start finding him better opposition for him because he’s really spinning his wheels with his career by fighting start up opposition rather than quality guys.
Khan is going to have problems with Canelo’s size in this fight. We saw how Miguel Cotto’s best shots simply bounced off of Canelo last November without slowing him down for a second. Canelo was like the incredible Hulk in the ring with the smaller Cotto. The thing is Cotto is a much bigger puncher than Khan.
If Cotto’s shots could do nothing against Canelo, then I sure as heck doubt that Khan’s punches will be able to stop the guy. Canelo is one of those strange fighters that really doesn’t belong at middleweight, but who is so incredibly good at draining down from light heavyweight, it just enables him to fight in a division that his body isn’t really suited for.
Canelo should be fighting in the light heavyweight division against guys like Adonis Stevenson and Sergey Kovalev, but he doesn’t have to because he’s got some specially ability to dehydrate really well and fight in a lower division.
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