By William Mackay: Now that promoter Eddie Hearn has successfully gotten his fighter Kell Brook (27-0, 18 KO’s) past his fight last night against the light-hitting fringe contender Matthew Hatton in an easy win, Hearn now is setting his sights on a fight between Brook and former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (26-2, 18 KO’s) in what Hearn envisions being a pay-per-view bout that he plans on staging in an outdoor arena in the UK. Hearn thinks the fight will make big cash and draw between 40,000 and 50,000 fans.

Hearn said this as quoted by espn.co.uk “We’ve sold 10,000 [tickets] for Kell Brook v Matthew Hatton. I could sell 40,000 tickets for Kell Brook against Amir Khan. It’s a pay-per-view fight…It has to be a pay-per-view outdoor fight, because he’s got big revenue coming from HBO in America.”

Hearn seems to be counting the money before it’s even been brought in yet. This sounds like an interesting fight on paper, but there’s one problem. Khan isn’t even slightly interested. He says what a lot of boxing fans have been saying for ages that Brook needs to start fighting quality contenders before he’ll opt to give him a fight. Brook still hasn’t fought anyone halfway decent. His best wins of his career have come against Hatton, Rafal Jackiewicz, Luis Galarza, 40-year-old Lovemore N’dou and Michael Jennings. That’s a pretty weak group of fighters. From the positive side, Brook has remained unbeaten and looked good because of the weak match-making. But on the negative side, it’s obviously not helping him by having him put in with 2nd tier fighters or fringe contenders without a name.

Hatton might be well known in the UK, but he’s hardly a household name in the United States. And Hearn setting up mismatches like this isn’t helping things. He needs to put Brook in competitive fights against quality opponents rather than picking out domestic level opponents that he obviously knows Brook can beat. Khan is right to ignore the Brook fight offer, because while it may interest fans in the UK, it won’t interest fans in the United States. No one, other than hardcore boxing fans, know who Brook is in the U.S., so why should Khan bother to fight him? If Hearn is smart, he’ll start building a name for Brook by bringing him over to the U.S to fight and take on top guys instead of fighters on the fringe with no power, no speed and very little threat to beating Brook.