brook4 By Scott Gilfoid: After being rejected for a fight against Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) for the summer, IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (35-0, 24 KOs) says he wants to focus on his March 26 fight against his #1 IBF mandatory challenger Kevin Bizier (25-2, 17 KOs) rather than on Khan.

Brook, 29, hasn’t given up on the idea of fighting Khan in the future. He just realizes that it’s a waste of his time to focus on a guy that is out of the picture for him right now.

Brook doesn’t have the kind of talent to where he can just assume he’s going to beat someone like the 31-year-old Bizier by showing up on March 26th in their fight at the Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, UK.

“I’m sick of talking about it, to be honest. We’ll have to come back to it when those fights take place,” Brook said via skysports.com. “There are other fighters who are willing to test themselves against the best so he’s [Khan] not wanting the thrill of fighting at Wembley, [in front of] a packed-out arena against me with a lot of history there.”

Well, I think Khan isn’t exactly taking on a soft touch in his next fight on May 7 against WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. I mean, Khan is fighting a better opponent than Brook, I must say. If Khan were to turn down a fight against Canelo in favor of fighting Brook, then he would arguably be taking a big step down in competition. I don’t think Brook could hang with Canelo even on his best night.

Brook wouldn’t be able to clinch his way to a victory over Canelo, if that were his game plan. We saw Brook clinch nonstop in his fight against Shawn Porter in 2014 in beating him by a questionable decision. I don’t think that Brook would beat Canelo by clinching, and I definitely don’t think Brook could ever beat Canelo by punching with him.

The referee that worked the Brook-Porter fight didn’t do anything to police the constant clinching by Brook, but I don’t think a referee would allow Brook to try that same trick against a popular fighter like Canelo. I could see Brook losing points over and over again to the point of him being disqualified against Canelo if he tried the clinching against him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mqdDAuRrLE

“He’s doing his thing. I’ve got Bizier to take care of and then we can talk again about taking a fight against a big name,” Brook said.

Brook has a problem. He would like to get the big names to fight him, but the problem is he doesn’t have a big enough name to get the top dogs. You can put a lot of the blame on Brook not being a well-known fighter on his promoter Eddie Hearn. If he seen the big picture from day one when he took over as Brook’s promoter five years ago, then he would have had him fighting in the U.S all this time.

If Hearn had done that, then maybe Brook would be popular like Gennady Golovkin. It would be a situation where Brook could get a lot more fights because the American fans would know who he is, and the top guys like Keith Thurman, Tim Bradley, Floyd Mayweather Jr, and Manny Pacquiao would see value in fighting him.

Brook needs to start fighting some good opposition after the Bizier fight because I do not think he’s got much time left as the IBF welterweight champion. Errol Spence Jr. is ranked No.2 with the IBF, and he’s going to be quickly picking up the IBF mandatory spot after he faces Chris Algieri in April. Once Brook faces Spence, I think that’s it for Brook as a champion unless he vacates his IBF title to avoid the loss. After Brook defeats Bizier, he’ll have two voluntary defenses available to him to live it up against whatever opponent Hearn digs up for him. I would suggest that Brook try and fight someone good in order to increase his popularity, but I don’t see that happening. I think he’s going to continue to waste his career fighting guys like Jo Jo Dan and Frankie Gavin. But that’s on Brook if he wants to waste time, because he’s pretty much going to be handing over his IBF title when he faces Spence in either 2017 anyway in my view.