khan44 By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn reportedly has offered Amir Khan over $10 million to fight Brook (35-0, 24 KOs) on June 4 at Wembley Stadium, in London, UK.

However, it doesn’t look like that’s going to be enough to get the 29-year-old Khan to agree to the fight, because he is said to want a bigger cut of the financial pie. It’s going to take a big cut for Khan to get more than $10 million.

If he’s going to get the Carl Froch type money that he received for his Wembley Stadium fight against George Groves in 2014, then it’s going to require that Khan get a bigger split of the revenue.

Khan is saying on Twitter that Brook is looking for a 50-50 split of the pie, and he’s not going to go for that; not against someone who has been fighting guys like Jo Jo Dan, Frankie Gavin, and Vyacheslav Glazkov instead of the big names.

“He [Khan] is trying to price himself out of the fight because he doesn’t want the fight,” Hearn said to skysports.com. “When we had that meeting on Monday, I was left gobsmacked by their demands. It is effectively bigger than an 80-20 split. We are talking about a voluntary defence of a world title by a world champion Kell Brook to Amir Khan,” Hearn said.

There you have it @AmirKingKhan – put up or shut up. No more talk, June 4 Wembley Stadium for the World title. I will destroy you.

— Kell Brook (@SpecialKBrook) January 22, 2016

I’m not sure that Hearn realizes that it doesn’t matter if you’re a champion or not in the sport. You’re not entitled to the bigger money just because you’re the champion. What matters in the sport of boxing is who the main draw is rather than who the paper champion is.

Unfortunately, a lot of boxing fans see Brook as a paper champion, and he’s not that well known outside of the UK. As such, it makes sense for Khan to be asking for more cash than Brook for a fight against him, because Khan has the name, and Khan is better known in the United States than Brook.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKUWHrFoOC0

The last time I checked, Brook doesn’t have a Silver medal from the Olympics. Khan has the melt and the name. I think Hearn and Brook need to decide how badly they want the fight against Khan. If they want it, then they need to be prepared to agree to whatever purse split that Khan wants for the fight.

If they don’t want to agree to Khan’s demands, then they need to move on and continue fighting guys like Jo Jo Dan, Frankie Gavin and Senchenko for the remainder of his career. Personally, I’ve kind of given up on the idea of Brook ever fighting any good talents. It just looks like he’s going to milk his IBF title for as long as he can, and when he’s faced with a real threat in Errol Spence Jr., I see Brook then vacating in the next second rather than taking that fight.

“I appreciate Khan is probably a bigger name than Kell Brook, but Kell Brook is world champion and he needs some kind of parity, but more importantly he needs respect,” Hearn said. “That’s why we are talking about a 60-40 split, it’s a great deal for Amir Khan.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BCQcudcFdc

I think the chances for Brook getting parity with Khan went out the window a long time ago, when Brook’s promoters chose to match him against soft opposition like Carson Jones, Matthew Hatton, Senchenko, Jo Jo Dan, Alvaro Robles, Hector David Saldivia, Luis Galarza and Rafal Jackiewicz in the last five years instead of putting him in with talented contenders.

That soft match-making definitely kept Brook undefeated, but it also kept him from making a big name for himself. You get what you put into the sport. If you fight only fodder, record-padding opposition the way that Brook has during his 11 year pro career, then you fail to make a name for yourself, and you find yourself being dictated to by Amir Khan. I think it’s definitely reasonable for Khan to ask for an 80-20 split in a fight against Brook, because Khan is that much bigger of a name than him in my view.

Khan has the option of fighting the winner of the Danny Garcia vs. Robert Guerrero fight for the WBC welterweight title. Hearn points out that Khan won’t even get $5 million for fighting Garcia. That might be so, but Khan would at least be getting the cut that he wants and he’ll arguably be fighting for the best title in the welterweight division. The WBC title is very prestigious. If Khan can win that title, it would be a huge feather in his cap. Winning the WBC title is like graduating from Oxford in my view.