Khan: Kell Brook still has to prove himself

By Boxing News - 06/19/2016 - Comments

Image: Khan: Kell Brook still has to prove himself

By Scott Gilfoid: Despite Amir Khan (31-4, 19 KOs) coming off a brutal sixth round knockout loss to former WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez on May 7 last month, Khan says he won’t give IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) a fight between he says he’s still not fighting “A-list” fighters yet, and he feels that 30-year-old has to earn the right to fight him by fighting the top guys.

Khan says if Brook fights half the top caliber fighters he’s faced during his career, then he’ll fight him.

Brook is fighting WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas (27-1, 10 Kos) on September 3 in a unification match at the Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, UK. This is a decent fight, but not a huge fight. Vargas isn’t an A-list fighter. He’s just a guy that beat #1 WBO contender Sadam Ali by a 9th round knockout last March to pick up the vacant WBO welterweight title. Vargas would be more respected if he had defeated Tim Bradley to win the belt when Bradley was still the WBO 147lb champion. Vargas lost to Bradley by a 12 round decision in June of 2015 in a mostly one-sided fight.

If Brook were to fight Canelo, I think it’s safe to say that he would be knocked out by the Mexican fighter. Brook is a good welterweight, but he’s not going to beat a guy as large as Canelo. If Brook were to start campaigning at 154 and if he filled out to the 170s like Canelo, then he would have a chance.

I still think it would be a tough ask for Brook to compete with Canelo. A fight between Brook and Canelo would have a very high likihood of Brook getting badly knocked out once Canelo caught him with a big shot. Brook can dish out the punishment pretty well, but he’s not invincible. Carson Jones had Brook badly hurt in their fight in 2012, and he might have knocked him out if there were 15 more seconds left in the 12th round.

“The thing with Brook, I just think there’s no point [in fighting him] because he’s not fighting the A-list fighters,” Khan said to Saima Ajram show on BBC Asian Network. “I’m taking tough punishment fighting the best fighters in the world and Kell Brook’s fighting the easy guys. He wants to make easy money fighting me. So I’m not going to give him the opportunity. I just want him to prove himself and if he fights even half of the fighters I’ve fought then I’ll take the fight.”

Presumably, Khan would want Brook to fight guys like Danny Garcia, Canelo, Chris Algieri, Luis Collazo, Devon Alexander, and Lamont Peterson. Brook can’t fight the following past Khan opponents because they’re no longer fighting: Marcos Maidana, Zab Judah, Paul McClosley, Andriy Kotelnik, Julio Diaz, and Marco Antonio Barrera. It wouldn’t be an interesting fight if Brook fought Paulie Malignaggi and Carlos Molina.

I don’t know if Brook will ever be able to prove himself worthy of fighting Khan because Brook has spent too much time fighting weaker guys during his 12-year pro career, and that’s kept him from being popular. Now that Brook is the IBF champion, he’s now dealing with the side effects of all the soft match-making that was done for him during his career. Instead of the top guys wanting to fight Brook, they’re basically ignoring him. They’re not doing that because they’re afraid of him. They’re doing that because there’s no upside in fighting Brook, because he’s not well known to the causal boxing fans in the United States. Brook isn’t a foreign fighter like Gennady Golovkin that has built a large fan base by fighting in the United States and by fighting in an exciting style.

Brook’s toughest opponent during his career is Shawn Porter, and Brook used constant clinching to defeat him. It was not a Golovkin-eque type of performance from Brook. it was someone that was using a gimmick to win the fight by holding rather than fighting.

For Brook to build up the type of popularity we’re seeing with Golovkin, he’ll need to do the following drastic things with his career:

– Stop holding in his fights

– Make a SERIOUS attempt to fight Golovkin, Canelo, Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade, David Lemieux, Daniel Jackson, Julian Williams, Erislandy Lara, Terence Crawford, Viktor Postol, Billy Joe Saunders, James Degale and Gilberto Ramirez. In other words, take some risks to try and win some fans.

– Stop fighting soft guys like he’s been doing for the past 12 years.

– Fight in the United States exclusively.

I don’t think Brook is going to do any of those things unfortunately in terms of changing his fighting style and the weak guys he’s been fighting. Yeah, Brook can call out guys like Khan and Danny Garcia, but if he’s not going to do something drastic to make himself popular enough to get those fights, then I don’t see him getting the fights he wants.

When you stunt your own career fighting soft jobs, then the end result is you’re not going to get the fights against the guys you want. Brook needs to put himself at a HUGE disadvantage by fighting Golovkin, Lemieux, Canelo, Charlo brothers and Lara for him to start making a name for himself. I’m not holding my breath waiting for Brook to take any risks with his career because coming events cast their shadows before. It’s too bad because Brook vs. Khan would be a big deal if Brook were more popular.