By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) says he wants IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook to fight several bigger names before he’ll consider facing him in the future. Right now with the way that the 29-year-old Brook has been facing lesser fighters, Khan isn’t sure whether he’ll ever fight him.
Khan says Brook has only fought Shawn Porter in terms of notable fighters. He wants to see him fight three bigger names before he’ll agree to fight him. Unfortunately, Khan has been giving Brook these same instructions for the last two years now, and instead of Brook stepping it up to show that he’s trying to earn the fight against him, we’ve seen him fight Frankie Gavin, Jo Jo Dan and Kevin Bizier.
There’s now the possibility that Brook could face WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas in his next fight if he’s willing to travel to the U.S to make the fight happen. Vargas is seen as a paper champion in the eyes of some boxing fans, because he didn’t have to beat a notable welterweight like Tim Bradley, Errol Spence, or Shawn Porter to get the WBO title. Vargas lost badly to Bradley last year.
Vargas was only able to win the WBO title against Sadam Ali after Bradley had to give up the WBO title in order to get a third fight against Manny Pacquiao. As such, I don’t know if you can count Vargas as being a big name. He’s basically just a paper champion. If Vargas were to fight someone talented like Spence, we’d likely see Vargas obliterated in three or four rounds. Of course, we wouldn’t see that fight take place because Vargas is with Top Rank and Spence is Al Haymon. Vargas is safe from a dangerous guy like Spence.
Brook might be safe too now that the International Boxing Federation has said that Spence has to fight the Top Rank promoted Konstantin Ponomarev in an IBF welterweight eliminator bout. That move may very well have saved Brook’s hide because if Spence was his IBF mandatory right now, he’d be fighting on borrowed time as the IBC 147lb champion. I think Spence is far better than Brook could ever dream of being.
“I still say he definitely needs to fight a few more bigger names to make that fight even bigger,” Khan said to ESPN.com. “It would be a big fight in England, yeah, but we can make that fight a global fight by him fighting some big names around the world, in America, instead of fighting mandatories he’s facing.”
It’s not just that Brook has been fighting mandatories that has kept him from facing the better opposition. It’s his promoters. They haven’t been willing to put him in with the better fighters. I mean, look at who Brook was fighting before all the mandatories. We saw him matched against Alvaro Robles, Vyachelsav Senchenko, Carson Jones, Hector Saldivia, Matthew Hatton, Luis Galarza and Rafal Jackiewicz.
Only Brook and his promoters know why he was matched up against those guys instead of the talented welterweight contenders and/or champions in the welterweight division. Those lower level opponents ate up years of Brook’s pro career when he should have been fighting better opponents.
Those fights didn’t just happen a short while ago. Brook was fighting those guys from 2011 to 2014. He’s a 12-year pro, and it’s not like those fights took place in year one of his pro career. They were happening fairly recently, and it’s pretty sad how poorly he’s been matched by his promoters.
The poor match-making that Brook has had has kept him from becoming a big name in the sport. As such, it’s difficult for him to get the big fights he wants against Khan and other notable fighters because he doesn’t have the prerequisite fights to get the names that he wants. In other words, when you pad your record the way that Brook has done through much of his career, it makes it very, very hard to get a big name when you start getting older and begin yearning for the big money fights.
Brook can only blame himself for going along with the poor match-making that’s been done for him. Brook should have stood on his hind legs and insisted that his promoters start matching him against big names. If Brook had done this 10 years ago, he wouldn’t be bellyaching now about Khan not wanting to fight him and him not being able to get the big stars to fight him.
Brook recently said he was interested in fighting IBF/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin at middleweight. However, when Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler said they were willing to take the fight with Brook if they were seriously interested in the fight, we heard nothing more from it on Brook and his promoter Eddie Hearn’s end. This makes you wonder whether Brook was ever serious at all about wanting to fight Golovkin. Brook says he wants a big fight, but when he has the chance to get one against Golovkin, he’s not saying anything. That suggests that Brook might be more concerned about keeping his unbeaten record than he is about fighting the best.
“If he steps up his game, the fight could be even bigger,” said Khan about Brook. “Look at me — I’m fighting the biggest names in boxing. If you look at the last opponents of Kell Brook. It is worth fighting him? He’s got a world title, I admit that, but it’s just that I want him to face more better opponents so the fight will be even bigger.”
I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for Brook to step it up, because it appears his idea of stepping it up is facing Jessie Vargas. That’s not stepping it up in my view. Brook fighting Golovkin, Shawn Porter [again], Errol Spence and Keith Thurman is stepping it up. I don’t consider Danny Garcia as a very good welterweight, so I wouldn’t say he would be a step up if Brook could get a fight against him. I don’t think Garcia and his adviser Al Haymon are going to make a fight against Brook. They’re looking for popular fighters, and Brook isn’t well known enough in the U.S to make it a worthwhile fight. We’ll likely see Garcia fight Adrien Broner, Andre Berto and Khan in his next three fights.