By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan posted a weird message on his social media site last Saturday night following Kell Brook’s 5th round stoppage loss to middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin at the O2 Arena in London, England. In the post, Khan appeared to be getting in a dig at Brook while at the same time giving him credit for giving Triple G a competitive match until his corner Dominic Ingle threw in the towel to save him from punishment in the 5th. See for yourself:
“That towel just showed the hype, overshadowed the setup. Feel for Kell. He did brilliant. [He] Dared to be great. Credit where it’s due.”
I’m not sure I understand what “hype” that Khan is talking about. Is it the Brook hype? Yeah, I don’t think Brook has ever really proven his ability in the welterweight division to be hyped properly. Brook just has that one fight against Shawn Porter to show for him in the 147lb division in terms of fighting quality opposition.
Sadly, that fight was little more than 12 rounds of spoiling for Brook, as he held Porter at every opportunity. That wasn’t real fighting. Other than that one fight against Porter, Brook faced largely horrible opposition in 12 years of record padding fights. As such, Brook came into the fight against Golovkin with a 36-0 record, but it wasn’t against quality opposition. You couldn’t really hype Brook because his resume was filled with wins over fluff opposition.
Khan and Brook are in the same boat now with both having been stopped recently by middleweights. Khan was knocked clean out by Saul “Canelo” Alvarez last May in a 6th round stoppage and he hasn’t fought since. Khan is coming off of hand surgery and he expects to fight in January 2017. Brook will be out of action for a while with a broken right eye socket. We still don’t know how long it’ll be before Brook comes back from that injury.
In an ideal world, Khan would volunteer to fight Brook in early 2017 so that the two struggling fighters could look to cash out while there’s still interest from the British boxing public to see the two of them fight each other.
If Khan waits much longer before finally agreeing to fight Brook, he could miss the chance of the fight making a ton of money. If Khan suffers another loss, which is entirely possible, then I doubt that a fight between him and Brook would even sell on Sky Box Office pay-per-view. Likewise, if Brook gets beaten in his next fight, it’ll be pretty much impossible to attract interest in fans in the UK to pay to see him fight Khan. Brook plans on moving down to junior middleweight for his next fight, where he thinks he’s going to take over the 154lb division. I don’t think so, but that’s what he believes. However, as soon as Brook is put in with a live body like the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade, Liam Smith, Miguel Cotto, Canelo Alvarez or Erislandy Lara, I expect him to lose. I don’t know what Brook will say at that point to explain away the loss. This time, we heard Brook blame his defeat to Golovkin on him suffering an eye injury. Okay, I buy that excuse. An injury like that can happen to anybody, and it clearly wasn’t possible for Brook to continue fighting with his eye injured like it was. However, Brook won’t be able to keep coming down with injuries over and over again in losing fights without the boxing public writing him off as being too fragile to compete against the top guys. Brook has had injury problems in the past in preparing for fights. We saw how he twice suffered fight canceling injuries while getting ready for a title shot against Devon Alexander. We also saw Brook suffer a fight canceling injury while training for a match against Diego Chaves last year. If Brook’s body can’t hold together while fighting the best guys, then I don’t think he’s going to be able to become the star he wants to be.
I think Khan needs to wake up and smell the coffee and realize that it’s time to cash out against Brook right now while the money is still there for that fight. If he waits much longer, he or Brook will get beaten again, and it will no longer be interesting for the boxing public to see the two of them fight each other.
After Khan’s 4th round knockout loss to Danny Garcia in 2012, he burned up four years of his career fighting tune-ups against the likes of Carlos Molina, Luis Collazo, Devon Alexander and Chris Algieri. Khan also did a lot of traveling to different countries, and it’s unclear how much interest he has in the sport of boxing at this this point in his career. It’s bad news when you get a fighter that isn’t fighting on a regular basis and is no longer fighting the best. That’s why I think it’s a good idea for Khan to take the fight against Brook right now before he gets exposed again.