https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvGK7ul3Pys
Like most everyone else, reigning and undefeated IBF welterweight king Kell Brook was shocked and surprised by this week’s out of the blue announcement that WBC middleweight champion Saul Alavarez will face former 140-pound ruler Amir Khan on May 7th. Brook, who has been asking, demanding and even pleading for a fight with Khan for the longest time, had an immediate and equally shocking answer for his promoter Eddie Hearn when he heard the Khan news: “Get me Golovkin at 155-pounds,” the Sheffield fighter said, as quoted by Metro from an interview with IFL TV.
Okay, the fight will not happen (although in this day, where catch-weights fights are all the rage, who knows for sure!) but Hearn insists his fighter was deadly serious in asking for the mega-fight, one that, if it happened, would even make Canelo-Khan pale some in comparison.
“I started laughing,” Hearn said to IFL TV when recalling his immediate reaction to Brook‘s demand. “And he said, ‘I’m serious.’ I actually spoke with Tom Loeffler (GGG’s promoter of course). I believe Kell is the best welterweight in the world, but he has to build the resume to prove it. He will jump into a super-fight in the summer. He has to and he will.”
That super-fight doesn’t look like being one against the feared, even ducked star from Kazakhstan. Or does it? GGG, as we know is craving the big fights his considerable talents deserve, and in the past he has spoken about either going down in weight or up in weight in order to get them. Could Brook, massive for a welterweight, make 155 and remain both strong, powerful and quick? Would you bet against it? And if so, would the weight discrepancy on fight night be as large as will be the case on May 7th, when Canelo figures to enter the ring around 170-pounds or maybe more and Khan possibly as low as 160? GGG is not a massive middleweight and Brook is a huge welterweight. No-one is saying the fight will happen, but it could some time in 2016.
Brook must first take care of unheralded IBF mandatory challenger Kevin Bizier on March 26th – a fight that has lost any lustre it had when officially announced, and understandably so in light of Khan trumping his would-be rival – but after that, who knows. Brook wants the big names at 147 such as the Shawn Porter-Keith Thurman winner and Danny Garcia, but if he cannot get those guys into the ring, and if GGG – who was recently over in London, his visit sparking off a number of rumours and whispers – cannot get the Canelo fight he is aching for, maybe he will take another trip to the UK after he has taken care of probable next foe Dominic Wade in April.
At least Brook is doing something precious few other fighters are doing, and that’s calling out Golovkin. Even fighters at GGG’s natural weight class are not doing what Brook just did. Even if “The Special One” possibly made his demand in a moment of frustration and nothing more.
