By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook won’t be fighting Amir Khan like he and his promoter Eddie Hearn had hoped, as their request for a 50-50 purse split was rejected by Team Khan for a fight in May. As such, the Brook-Khan fight won’t be taking place in the first half of 2017. Khan says that Brook didn’t want the fight.
Hearn is still hopeful that the fight can take place in the second half of this year, but even then it’s still unknown if it will happen. Unless Brook and Hearn come down from their asking price for the fight, they might not get the fight at all.
It won’t be a big deal for Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) if Hearn can produce a fight for him against Manny Pacquiao or the winner of the Danny Garcia vs. Keith Thurman fight. If Hearn can’t get either of those fights, then Brook will have some tough choices to make in terms of who to fight. Brook always has an immediate difficult choice to make about whether he should now defend his international Boxing Federation 147lb title against his mandatory Errol Spence (21-0, 18 KOs) or should he vacate his title to avoid the fight and move up to 154. That’s a tough choice for Brook, because the 154lb division is loaded with talented fighters, some of which might even be good enough to beat Spence. Jermall Charlo, the IBF champion, would be a nightmare for Brook or Spence. Charlo looks hard to beat right now.
Hearn said this to skysports.com about the negotiations for the Khan vs. Brook fight failing to produce an agreement for a fight:
“I think Amir wants a warm-up fight before Kell, but certainly it looks like this fight is dead until later in the year,” said Hearn. “We feel this fight is easy to make with a straight 50-50 split, but Khan’s team felt Kell didn’t deserve anywhere near 50-50. It was a very quick meeting!”
Well, what did Hearn expect Khan to do? He wasn’t going to give a 50-50 deal to a fighter with only one big name on his entire 13-year pro resume. The only big name on Brook’s resume is Gennady Golovkin, who he lost to by a fast 5th round knockout. Brook made a big deal about how he gave Golovkin problems in the fight, but the reality is, Brook ran from him for most of the fight until getting stopped in round 5.
Brook didn’t stand his ground in any of the rounds. Brook chose to move, which prevented him from even having a sliver of a chance of beating GGG. Brook’s other notable fight during his career was against Shawn Porter, who he held all night long to keep him from throwing punches. That was just an awful fight to watch. Hearn was proud of how Brook fought with the way he constantly tied Porter up. I don’t know how you could be proud of that type of fight though, because some referees would have likely penalized a fighter like Brook for his nonstop holding and disqualified him. All in all, it was not a fight where Brook showed that he could beat Porter by punching. It was more of a strategy fight where Brook held frequently to keep Porter from throwing punches while the referee did nothing to inhibit the holding by taking points away.
“Well basically my team sat down with Kell Brook and his manager. We tried to make the fight and Kell Brook said he doesn’t want the fight, so it’s not happening,” said Khan to ITV’s This Morning. “It’s something I didn’t want to tweet, but you guys asked me so I want to tell you the truth. I want the fight and Kell Brook has just walked away from it, he doesn’t want it.”
So there it is. Brook didn’t want the fight with Khan. This is not good news for Brook’s boxing fans, as they wanted to see the fight between him and Khan. Brook now needs to make a decision on whether to fight the talented Spence or give up his IBF title. I don’t think Brook is eager to take that fight, and I don’t blame him. But since Brook sees himself as the best welterweight in the division, he should have no problems facing Spence. I mean, if Brook REALLY believes he’s the No.1 fighter in the 147lb division, then why wouldn’t he want to fight an inexperienced fighter like Spence? If you’ve seen Spence fight, you’ll have noticed that his defense is quite leaky. He’s not hard to hit, and he doesn’t look great sometimes when taking shots. Spence is not in the class of guys like Floyd Mayweather Jr. when it comes to hand speed, reflexes or defensive skills. What makes Spence difficult is he punches VERY hard, and he’s a dangerous body puncher. Spence is also totally committing to knocking his opposition out as quickly as possible. Spence is not going to be wasting time trying to box Brook. He’s going to be looking to take his head off from the shoulders. But what makes Spence do difficult for a fighter like Brook is he won’t waste time doing a lot of head hunting like Golovkin.
Brook used a lot of head movement to make Golovkin miss with many of his shots in their fight on September 10. Instead of Golovkin giving up on trying to throw head shots, he doubled his efforts, and continued to throw shots as hard as he could. Brook made most of Golovkin’s shots miss, but the ones got through were more than enough to bust up Brook’s eye and force his trainer to throw in the towel. It may have been a body shot that Golovkin landed in the 5th round that caused Brook to stop fighting, because he stopped fighting back after he was hit hard to the body in that round. Spence will focus on Brook’s body with his powerful punches, and that’ll make it extremely difficult for Kell. It won’t matter how much Brook moves his head, Spence will be nailing him to the body, and there won’t be a thing he can do about it.
Gilfoid is going to have a Brook title vacating watch for the next month, because he only has a month left before he has to let the IBF know whether he’s going to fight Spence or not. I’m predicting that Brook vacates his IBF title in the next 4 weeks. I think Brook will drag it out as long as possible though, because it makes him look better being a champion rather than a contender. But by next month, Brook will need to let the IBF know whether he’ll defend the title against Spence or not.
It’s obviously nice to be a champion, but it comes with a heavy burden sometimes. I think Brook had no problems being the IBF champion when he was fighting the likes of Jo Jo Dan, Frankie Gavin and Kevin Bizier. But now that Errol Spence has been selected as his mandatory challenger, it’s probably not so nice to be the IBF champion. Brook wasn’t constantly complaining about his difficulties making weight for his earlier matches like he is now. What changed? Did Brook put on weight in the past year or is just not convenient that he has to fight a talented challenger in Spence now instead of the guys that he’d been facing at 147?