For years now — years — Kell Brook and Amir Khan have talked about a potential fight. There was thought to be a deal in place for them to meet in 2019, but that fell apart when Khan was offered a big check to fight Terence Crawford instead.
And now, Brook says he’s fully given up on the fight ever happening.
“There’s no more I can do. It’s gone past the line now,” the former welterweight titleholder told Sky Sports. “I’ve done everything asked of me to make it happen. And still we’re nowhere.”
Now 33, Brook (39-2, 27 KO) wound up sitting out all of 2019, returning from a 14-month layoff in February of this year to easily handle Mark DeLuca. Khan, also 33, was most recently in the ring last July, knocking out overmatched Billy Dib in a quiet but lucrative rebound win in Saudi Arabia, three months after the disaster against Crawford.
Brook is now in Crawford’s sights, with a lot of smoke around that matchup. Crawford has said he’ll do it if he can’t get one of the bigger name PBC fighters, and given that that’s pretty difficult to do, Brook really might be next up for him. It’s not a fight much of anyone is demanding, but there are worse ideas. It’s certainly bigger and more credible than Crawford against Chris van Heerden, with due respect to the solid van Heerden.
But as much as we’d all hope for this to be the last we hear of Brook vs Khan, I doubt it will be. They’re both 33, and can talk as much as they want about being done with it, or about being two fights away from retirement. This could happen in five years. It’ll be way past sell-by date by then, but we’ve seen stupider ideas get into the ring before. I mean, we forced an absurd Hopkins-Jones rematch onto PPV in the US, so why not?
Source: badlefthook.com
