By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) and his mandatory challenger Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs) have a purse bid scheduled for February 26, according to Spence. He’s just waiting for the purse bid. He doesn’t know if Brook is going to vacate his IBF title at the last second or what.
Spence is really hoping that Brook doesn’t give up his belt, because he says he wants to personally dethrone him to win the IBF title in the traditional manner rather than getting it outside of the ring. Brook will be entitled to a 75/25 split of the revenue for the Spence fight. That’s something that Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn has been mentioning over and over again, as if he’s already counting the money that Brook will be getting for the fight.
Frankly, I think Hearn keeps mentioning the 75/25 split so that he can scare off Spence and his manager Al Haymon from wanting to take the fight. I don’t think that’s going to work though. Spence needs the IBF belt to use the title for a unification match against the winner of the Danny Garcia vs. Keith Thurman fight.
Spence is hoping to fight the winner of that fight in 2017. It would be a BIG year for Spence if he can take Brook’s scalp, and then follow that up by taking the WBC and WBA titles from the winner of the Garcia-Thurman fight if they agree to fight him, which is still unknown. I think Thurman would possibly fight Spence, but I’m not too sure about Garcia.