By Scott Gilfoid: Kell Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) believes that he’s on top of the pile for a fight against Manny Pacquiao, Danny Garcia, Keith Thurman and Amir Khan. Brook was stopped in his last fight against middleweight talent Gennady “GGG” Golovkin two months ago, but he figures the loss to the Kazakhstan KO machine only enhanced his credentials for a big fight rather than hurting them.
Brook thinks that he should get a fight against Pacquiao, Khan, Garcia or Thurman regardless of him having lost his last fight. Unfortunately for Brook, we haven’t heard any of those fighters mentioning his name recently. They’re staying quiet about Brook. Instead, their promoters are talking about other fighters.
Not surprisingly, Khan wants Pacquiao or the winner of the Thurman vs. Danny Garcia fight. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum is talking about wanting to match him against Terence Crawford, Garcia, Vasyl Lomachenko or Thurman for his next fight. Thurman’s next fight will be against Garcia if he doesn’t get the Pacquiao fight.
“Manny Pacquiao, Danny Garcia and Keith Thurman are fighting and I am top of that pile, I am looking forward to getting a top fight made,” said Brook to skysports.com.
One thing that really hurts Brook’s chances of getting one of those guys to fight him, besides the fact that he was stopped in his last match by Golovkin, is the fact that he’s injured. Brook suffered a broken right eye socket in the loss to GGG. Brook already had surgery to repair the problem, and he’s expected to be back inside the ring in good health in earl 2017.
Still, it’s a risky proposition for one of the above mentioned big names to sign for a fight against Brook right now, given the nature of his injury. If one of those guys were to sign for a fight against Brook, they could wind up with nothing to show for it if Brook comes up lame in training camp with his eye acting up. That’s all they need is to be stuck in a potential never-ending cycle of waiting for Brook’s surgically repaired right eye to be in good enough shape for him to fight.
We already saw what happened to Wladimir Klitschko with him losing an entire year of his boxing career dealing with Tyson Fury pulling out of two fights against him for an injury and whatnot. I would be very surprised if Garcia, Pacquiao, Khan or Thurman want to risk being stuck waiting on Brook if his right eye starts giving him problems. With an injury like Brook, he really needs to show the top fighters that he can make it through a training camp and a fight against someone else before they agree to take a risk in fighting him.
Their time is too valuable for them to lose a year or six months of their careers waiting for someone with an eye problem to get healthy enough to fight. I’m just saying. If I was the promoter for those top fighters, I’d be reluctant to put my fighters in with Brook until I knew for a fact that his eye was completely healed. The only way I would know that is if Brook went through an entire training camp and fought someone else. If Brook’s eye held up, then I’d agree to have my fighter face him. If not, then I’d steer clear of him.
It seems to me that Brook has a mandatory due against #1 IBF Errol Spence Jr. that he should be facing next rather than him yapping about wanting to fight Khan, Pacquiao, Garcia or Thurman. Brook really should be looking to take care of business against Spence Jr. before he starts looking for another fight. To be honest, I don’t know how Brook would be even allowed to fight a unification fight against Garcia or Thurman.
The International Boxing Federation recently gave Brook a 60-day medical extension to heal up before he has to defend his IBF title against Spence. If Brook turns around and instead asks the IBF to allow him to fight a unification fight against Thurman or Garcia, then I think that’s not a good deal for Spence. Besides that, Brook would end up sitting out of the ring for a long, long time waiting for the unification fight against Garcia or Thurman to take place. Those two guys are expected to face each other in March or 2017. In that case, Brook would be keeping the IBF 147lb title frozen until at least June or July of next year before he would defend the title.
I don’t see how the IBF would allow him to do that without stripping him of his title. Brook hasn’t defended his IBF title since March of 2016. If he still hasn’t defended the belt by June or July of 2017, then that would be more than a year since his last defense. How in the heck does the IBF allow Brook to sit on their title without defending it?
I don’t see how they could do this. Either Brook faces Spence next in early 2017, or he should be stripped of his title in my opinion. It’s no good having Brook sit on his IBF belt until mid-2017 in order to fight a unification match against Garcia or Thurman. It’s the same thing with WBO champion Manny Pacquiao. He’s not going to be back inside the ring until the first quarter of 2017. Brook would be freezing the IBF title if he were to wait until Pacquiao is ready to fight.
“I’ll meet him at welterweight if he actually wants to get in and stop talking about it,” said Brook about a fight against Khan. “We need to sit down, get it signed and get it done for the fans. I am a champion amongst those names in the welterweight division, my name and profile has risen quite highly after the Golovkin fight.”
I don’t think Khan wants the fight against Brook right now. He’s more interested in looking for a fight against Pacquiao, Thurman or Danny Garcia. Khan is ranked #1 by the World Boxing Council. Those fights would make big news in the U.S. Brook is probably going to need to wait until 2018 before he gets a fight against Khan.