By Scott Gilfoid: Former cruiserweight world champion Johnny Nelson thinks IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook should move on and forget all about a fight against Amir Khan for June 4 at Wembley Stadium, in London, England.
In Nelson’s opinion, Khan doesn’t want the fight with Brook, and is intentionally pricing himself out in order to avoid the fight without coming out and saying ‘I don’t want the fight.’ Nelson believes that Khan might not be willing to take the fight and risk losing. He believes there’s no other way of looking at it, because the money that Khan would get facing other guys like WBC welterweight champion Danny Garcia would be considerably less than what he would get against Brook.
I think it’s more of a case of Khan not being motivated to fight a guy who hasn’t really paid his dues, and who has an inflated resume filled with weaker opponents.
If you look at the fighters that Brook has fought during his career, what jumps out at you is all the awful fodder opposition he’s padded his resume with. The only name on Brook’s entire resume is Shawn Porter, and that’s a fight that Brook would have lost had the referee that worked the fight controlled his excessive clinching.
“Kell Brook needs to forget about Amir Khan,” Nelson said to IFL TV. “Amir Khan does not want to fight. What Amir Khan is doing is putting himself in a position where he’s going to play hard to get because Kell’s chasing after him. Kell needs to say ‘No, forget that.’ He’ll [Khan] not fight Danny Garcia, trust me. The fight won’t happen. His options are Danny Garcia or Kell Brook unless he picks somebody else and tries to justify picking somebody else. Stop paying attention. Stop chasing after him. He’s in the position where I’m guessing he’s made enough money to where he can walk away from the game. Unfortunately, we might be going down the same road as Ricky Hatton-Junior Witter, where everyone wanted the fight and it never happened. That’s the only reason why I can see him making the kind of demands that are kind of ridiculous by pricing yourself out of the job. Kell Brook is the champion and he says allegedly it has to be an 80-20 split. I ain’t going to agree to that if I were a world champion. He’s not going to get a fight against Manny Pacquiao. He’s not going to get a fight against Floyd Mayweather. Where you going to go? So he sounds like he’s trying to price himself out of the fight. Move on. Get a fight with Danny Garcia; get a fight with [Keith] Thurman,” Nelson said.
I agree that Brook should definitely move on, but I also believe he should have recognized a long time ago that Khan wasn’t impressed with the opposition he was fighting. Brook should have put some heat on his different promoters to put him in with tougher opponents a long time ago. Maybe if Brook had already fought the best and proven that he’s an elite fighter, then Khan might want to fight him right now instead of him being turned off at the sight of seeing Brook face Kevin Bizier and before that Frankie Gavin, Jo Jo Dan and Vyacheslav Senchenko.
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