By Gav Duthie: Surely lightning isn’t going to strike for about the 50th time for Special’ Kell Brook 32-0 (22) as it looks increasingly likely that once again he is going to miss out on a big fight for the IBF Welterweight title. I reckon Brook could probably enter the Guinness book of records for longest time as mandatory challenger, now around the 2 year mark.
Its difficult to pin down whats actually happening with this fight. A few days ago we were told by Porter Snr that Shawn Brook hadn’t signed his part of the contract. Now it seems to be the other way round that Porter is stalling.
Eddie Hearn reckons that Porter is trying to get the Mayweather fight in September. He says that maybe Porter feels that the risk versus reward of fighting Brook is putting him off but also says that if he does fight Mayweather then he will be stripped of the IBF strap.
Mayweather v Porter
Recently I wrote that I felt most logical opponent for Floyd was Keith Thurman. However I only felt this because Porter was being forced to fight Brook the month before. On one hand I think it would be a disgrace and cowardice of Porter to avoid Brook in favour of Mayweather but it does make business sense. I agree with Eddie Hearn that the IBF would strip him of the title. Just last year the IBF was extremely cut throat with Brit Jamie McDonnell stripping him of his title because he didn’t fight his mandatory opponent within 6 months.
From Porter’s point of view even if he did give it up he could always win it back down the line after Mayweather. The standard fee to fight Floyd seems to be around $1.5 million. I doubt he would get half that for the Brook fight and if he lost he would be well down the pecking order to fight Mayweather. I think Brook is a great fighter but because he hasn’t proved this yet a victory over him would be of less value than Devon Alexander or Paulie Maliggnaggi apart from in the UK.
Where could this leave Brook?
Up step the IBF number 2 challenger Romanian Ionut Dan Ion 33-2 (18). I don’t quite know how he got this rank but in the interest of fairness this would need to be the fight if the title became vacant. Dan Ion is decent but has two losses to the recently exposed Selcuk Aydin 26-3 (19) who went on to lose three fights since his back to back victories over the Romanian.
I really hope the Porter-Brook fight goes ahead because its not just about winning a title its who you beat to get it. If he does win it against the likes of Dan Ion he would be a 33-0 fighter with a world title and we still wouldn’t know how good he is. In the last couple of days Amir Khan said he would consider fighting Brook if he won a world title so we may need to wait for that before we find out how Special Kell Brook really is.
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