By Tim Royner: With his comeback fight tonight against Phil Lo Greco (28-3, 15 KOs), Amir Khan is already targeting a fight against Kell Brook at the end of the year. That’s supposed to be a stadium fight.
There’s a lot of interest from the British boxing public in the Khan vs. Brook fight despite both guys not being major players in their respective weight classes.
Khan (31-4, 19 KOs) is signed with the same promoter as Brook with him recently inking with Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing. Hearn is interested in placing the Khan-Brook fight at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales. That place has become the new favorite place for Hearn to have IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua to fight. Unlike the Joshua vs. Deontay Wilder fight that Hearn has let marinate for the past two years, he seems to be in an awful hurry to make the Khan vs. Brook fight.
“We’ve made it even more realistic now, because I’m with Eddie Hearn and so is he,” Khan said to skysports.com about a big money fight with Brook. “I think it can happen maybe end of the year. I would like to be in a stadium to be honest with you. I want the big show, definitely,” Khan said in talking up the Brook fight.
Brook-Khan would happen even if the two fighters were with different promoters. Hearn wants that fight so badly, he would reach out to whatever promoter Khan was with in order to put it together. Of course, that doesn’t mean the fight would happen if Hearn came up with some ridiculous figure.
Brook recently ended a 2-fight losing streak in defeating Sergey Rabchenko by a 2nd round knockout last March. While it was a good victory for Brook, it was against a weak opponent and not much better than Khan’s opponent Lo Greco. Brook believes that he’s now at the top again and ready to go after the big names at 154. However, Hearn wants him to fight Khan, and he’s not showing the same eagerness to match him against any of the dangerous fighters at 154 like Jarrett Hurd, Jermell Charlo and Erislandy Lara.
“I think the fight between me and him would be massive, and that’s what the Brits want to see,” Khan said.
There was a time when Khan vs. Brook would have been a massive fight, but I’m not so certain that’s the case now. Without Brook and Khan taking on the best fighters and proving they can beat them in their weight classes, the Khan-Brook fight looks more like a money grab more than anything. It’s not a fight between the best fighters at 147 and 154. More importantly, the Khan vs.
Brook fight is late, very late. The fight should have taken place no later than 2015, when Brook was still the IBF welterweight champion. Khan had already been beaten by Danny Garcia and Lamont Peterson by then, but he had put together some nice comeback wins in beating Carlos Molina, Devon Alexander and Chris Algieri.