By William Lloyd: The long-awaited match between former British welterweight stars Amir Khan and Kell Brook is targeted for February 19th in Manchester, England. The fight will be on pay-per-view.
Negotiations are still ongoing between the aging former world champions Khan (34-5, 21 KO) and the 35-year-old Brook, but it’s hoped that they’ll get this mouth-watering fight over the line.
According to the Daily Star, the purse split has been agreed upon, but other areas still need to be worked out between the soon to between former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Khan and Brook. The issues are said to be minor ones that can be sorted through quickly.
Promoter Eddie Hearn believes the interest that was once there by British fans in seeing Khan vs. Brook has long passed, and it’s nowhere near the fight that it could have been.
Those thoughts are echoed by many boxing fans as well, who don’t see the point of the Khan-Brook fight taking place now because both guys are past it and no longer active.
Still, older boxing fans will be intrigued at finally getting the chance to see Khan and Brook battling it out, even if the fight is past its sell-by date.
Ideally, Khan vs. Brook should have taken place a decade ago, in early 2011, before Amir was beaten in consecutive fights by Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia.
For all intents and purposes, Khan’s career as a significant player was finished after suffering back-to-back defeats, as he got stuck on the rebuilding stage and never got back to seriously competing for titles.
Khan will be turning 35 early next month on December 8th and hasn’t fought in two and a half years since his win over former IBF featherweight champion Billy ‘The Kid’ Dib in July 2019 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Although Khan has had a lot of interest from different fighters to face him in the last couple of years, he’s resisted returning to the ring. Likely, the money wasn’t up to Khan’s liking.
Former IBF welterweight champion Brook (39-3, 27 KOs) hasn’t fought since he was stopped by WBO 147-lb champ Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford on November 14th, 2020.
It’s unclear why Brook hasn’t stayed active since his defeat against Crawford because he looked pretty good and was landing well up to the point where he was severely hurt by a sneaky right hook from the Nebraska native in the fourth.
Khan vs. Brook will either be fought at 147 or a catchweight at junior middleweight. If Khan gets his way, Brook will need to boil down to 147 to fight him, putting him at a disadvantage.
Brook has fought chiefly at junior middleweight in the last two years of his career. The only fight he had at 147 since 2018 was against Crawford in 2020, and he was stopped.
Eddie Hearn has made it known that he’d instead set up a fight between Khan and unbeaten welterweight contender Conor Benn, as he believes it would create more interest from fans than a Khan-Brook match-up. Understandably, Khan isn’t interested in fighting the 24-year-old Benn.