By Scott Gilfoid: If trainer Virgil Hunter gets his way we’ll be seeing a fight between his fighter Amir “King” Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) and unbeaten but totally untested IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (35-0, 24 KOs) in the near future. Hunter wants the two fighters to face each other for the good of boxing, as well as the good of the UK.
Hunter thinks it would be a great fight if/when it eventually happens. Despite wanting the fight to take place, Hunter hasn’t put pressure on the 28-year-old Khan to face Brook, because he realizes that he has bad blood with the Sheffield fighter and has his reasons for not wanting to throw him a bone by giving him a shot that he feels he’s done precious little to earn.
“I would hope at some point that they both fight each other,” Hunter said to skysports.com. “I know it would be good for Great Britain, good for him and good for boxing. I’ve never pushed him to take the fight because it’s obvious there are some things going on between them from long before I came along.”
Khan recently said that he’ll agree to fight Brook in 2016 if he first faces and beats two high quality opponents like Marcos Maidana, Tim Bradley or Danny Garcia. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. Instead of Brook fighting any of those fighters, Brook will be facing #4 IBF Diego Chaves (23-2-1, 19 KOs) on October 24th on Sky Box Office from the Sheffield Arena, in Sheffield, UK.
While Brook is technically in the mix for a shot against superstar Manny Pacquiao for early 2016, it’s a fight that has very little chance of happening. If Brook gets past Chaves next month, then perhaps the best we can hope for from Brook is a fight against the Tim Bradley vs. Brandon Rios fight.
I can’t see Brook fighting the winner of that fight because they’ll likely run into disagreements over the split of the loot and rematch clause that Brook and his promoter Eddie Hearn will likely want in the contract. Those are the things that brought down the Brook vs. Rios fight recently.
Unless Hearn wants to open up his piggy bank to get the winner of the Bradley-Rios fight, Brook will likely wind up facing another opponent in the class of Jo Jo Dan or Frankie Gavin. Hearn simply has not been matching Brook up against quality opponents since he took over as his promoter.
The only good opponent that Brook has ever fought was Shawn Porter, and Brook used nonstop clinching to beat him by a narrow margin. I had Porter winning that fight handily because I can’t give rounds to a fighter that clinches over 10 times per round like I saw from Brook.
Unless Khan is fine with Brook only facing the likes of Diego Chaves and perhaps Kevin Bizier in his fight after that, I don’t see the Khan-Brook fight taking place in 2016.
“It has all the ingredients for a big fight. I’m sure that if both continue to fight that the fight’s going to happen,” Hunter said
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