By Scott Gilfoid: In a sign that IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (35-0, 24 KOs) may be getting a little desperate to get a big money summer fight on June 4th at Wembley Stadium, Brook is now saying he hopes that Floyd Mayweather Jr. will come out of retirement to fight him.
It’s a real pipe dream obviously on Brook’s part, but it kind of shows you how desperate he’s become to get that big money fight he’s been dreaming of for ages now. The fighter that Brook would like to face Amir Khan doesn’t seem all that interested in agreeing to the fight unless he gets the cut of the financial pie that he wants.
It makes sense. Why take a fight unless you’re getting what you feel you deserve? Well, with the Khan fight seemingly unavailable at this time, Brook is taking the shotgun approach to naming potential opponents he’d like to face in the summer. Brook says he wants to fight Khan, the winner of the Keith Thurman vs. Shawn Porter fight, Danny Garcia or Mayweather.
Thus far, Brook hasn’t named Errol Spence Jr., Terence Crawford, Jermall Charlo, Demetrius Andrade, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez or Gennady Golovkin. Heck, Brook might as well name all those guys, because I do not see him getting all those guys he’s been naming.
“I’ll enjoy myself that night and then look for a massive fight. If it’s not the kid from Bolton (Khan of course), then it could be [Danny] Garcia or the [Shawn] Porter-[Keith] Thurman winner, or the winner of [Manny] Pacquiao and [Tim] Bradley – or we might get [Floyd] Mayweather out of retirement, you never know,” Brook said via Fightnews.com.
Brook can forget all about fighting Mayweather because that definitely isn’t going to happen. There’s no way in the world that Mayweather would make a comeback just so he could fight a little known fighter with an inflated record and a paper title like Brook. If anyone that Mayweather could wind up fighting, it’s someone like Danny Garcia, because Mayweather was scouting out his last fight against Robert Guerrero last Saturday night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California.
A lot of boxing fans believe that the soul reason that Mayweather came to the fight to see the Garcia-Guerrero fight was so that he could checkout how Garcia looked in winning his old WBC 147lb title. If Mayweather were to launch a comeback, he could be the guy that takes away Garcia’s O and win back his WBC title in the process. That’s sure as heck a much better fight than it would be for Mayweather to fight Brook, a fighter who few American casual boxing fans are familiar with at this time.
You can’t blame Brook for mentioning Mayweather’s name, as well as the other top guys, but I don’t think it’s something that can realistically happen. Mayweather is not going to come back in order to take Brook’s IBF title away from him. There’s no upside for Mayweather in fighting Brook.
“First things first, and as I’ve told Kell, do not take your eye off the ball. Kevin Bizier is a very hungry fighter,” Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn said via Fightnews.com. “We know the IBF are very strict with their mandatories and there was no way Kell was going to give up the IBF title, he has worked too hard for it. But as far as the Khan fight, we can’t do any more to make the fight. We’ve been at the table time and again and yet we’re told we are miles away as far as the perceived value they believe they are worth. The entire British public want it but we can’t force a man to fight. So after Bizier we have one [other] choice: to unify the division. I believe Kell is the best welterweight in the world and the best British pound-for-pound fighter today.”
I don’t agree that Brook is the best welterweight in the world. If Brook was the best, he would have beaten Shawn Porter in a convincing manner without clinching him nonstop in their fight in 2014. If that’s the best fighter in the world at welterweight, then the division must be in really sorry shape. Brook was holding on for dear life the entire fight, and I couldn’t believe the referee didn’t dock him multiple points and disqualify him, because I thought I was watching a replay of Lennox Lewis vs. Henry Akinwande.
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