Amir Khan: Kell Brook can end Terence Crawford’s reign

By Boxing News - 11/09/2020 - Comments

By Chris Williams: Amir Khan believes that Kell Brook will end the unbeaten reign of WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford next Saturday night in their fight on ESPN in ‘The Bubble’ at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Brook (39-2, 27 KOs) is the underdog in the fight for obvious reasons. He hasn’t been in against a talented opponent since his loss. But the talent remains, and he was good enough to get the better of Spence and Gennadiy Golovkin before and during periods after the eye injuries occurred.

Former IBF/WBA light-welterweight champion Khan (34-5, 21 KOs) firmly believes that Brook can and will win this fight and end Crawford’s two-year reign as the WBO 147-lb champ.

It won’t be that big of a deal for Crawford to get beaten because it’s not as if he’s held the WBO 147lb title for an extended period of time. I mean, two years is nothing. Now, if Crawford had held his WBO title for 12 years, the way that former heavyweight champion Joe Louis held onto his World title.

Khan says Brook can beat Crawford

“The main fight that people want to see is the Manny Pacquiao fight,” said Khan to Secondsout. “We both have a good past history where you’ve fought the biggest names in boxing.

Image: Amir Khan: Kell Brook can end Terence Crawford's reign

“You’ve both been in the top ten in the world. You’ve trained together, and you’ve sparred together, and it makes for a good story. We are the same weight, and styles make weight. I think that’ll be a brilliant fight for me.

“Also then, people were talking about the Kell Brook fight, which I think will be another amazing fight. Obviously, he’s got his hands full with Terence Crawford.

“So he’s going to have his hands full with that fight. I wish him nothing but the best. I wish Kell the very best to go out there and put a stop to his [Crawford] reign, and he can do that. Kell’s a good fighter.

“I’ve always respected him. As a Brit, we have to respect our own fighters. We have to respect each other. And even though we’ve not looked eye to eye many years, but I’m going to be rooting for him,” said Khan.

Brook has the power to beat Terence

For Brook to win, he’s going to have to put a lot of pressure on Crawford early and then look to wear him down. Brook has superior size and power. We don’t know about Crawford’s chin that well because his opposition generally has fringe-level fighters during his career.

We did Crawford hurt several times his last fight against Egidijus Kavaliauskas last December, but he was able to keep fighting and win by a ninth-round knockout.

Image: Amir Khan: Kell Brook can end Terence Crawford's reign

Little 5’5″ Yuriorks Gamboa hurt Crawford in their fight in 2014, and he was giving away a huge amount of size to him. Based on those two fights, we have to conclude that Craword is vulnerable in the chin department.

Brook will need to stay on top of Crawford to get the win because if he allows him to fight on the outside, he’ll jab and potshot his way to a boring 12 round decision.

We don’t know about Brook how much strength he’ll have after he drains down to 147 to make weight. Brook looked weakened the last time he made 147 three years ago for his fight with Errol Spence.

Brook moved up to 154 after that fight, and he looked weak when he fought Michael Zerafa at 150 in 2018. However, it’s unknown whether Brook took off too quickly during training camp for that fight.