British fans are finally about to get a real treat with the mouth-watering Amir Khan vs. Kell Brook held on February 19th on Sky Box Office PPV at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England.
The fans have been waiting for this match to get made between Khan (34-5, 21 KOs) and Brook (39-3, 27 KOs) for roughly 15 years since 2005, and it’s finally here.
Yeah, it’s a tad bit late for the 34-year-old Khan and 35-year-old Brook to be fighting, but it should be an entertaining match, even if both guys are a little washed at this stage in their respective careers.
Unfortunately, the younger boxing fans might not be familiar with Khan and Brook because neither of them has been central figures in the 147-lb division for many years now, but the older fans will remember them.
This fight won’t tell us who was the better fighter of the two between Khan and Brook if the contest had taken place in the primes of their careers, but it’ll show us where they’re at right now in their mid-30s.
Khan’s notable career victories:
- Marco Antonio Barrera
- Billy Dib
- Marcos Maidana
- Devon Alexander
- Chris Algieri
- Luis Collazo
- Samuel Vargas
- Andriy Kotelnik
- Dmitry Salita
- Paulie Malignaggi
We’ll never know how good Khan could have been because, after his consecutive losses to Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia in 2011 and 2012, he essentially stopped fighting for world titles.
From that point on, Khan mostly took tune-ups or went for well-paying fights that he had zero chance of winning against Canelo Alvarez and Terence Crawford.
Much effort from Khan was put into calling out Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao for payday fights that he didn’t deserve, given that his career was was in a downward freefall from 2011 after losing to Lamont Peterson.
“Khan and Brook are icons of the sport in Britain and this will be an iconic encounter. Their rivalry has simmered for years, they are still by far the best welterweights in the country and the eyes of the world will be on them when they square off in February to finally settle the question about which of them is the better man,” said Ben Shalom, BOXXER’s founder and CEO.
It would have been better if Khan had agreed to fight Brook a decade ago when the two were still in the zenith of their careers, but he was more interested in calling out Mayweather and Pacquiao than taking on Kell.
You can hardly blame Khan for preferring to fight Mayweather and Pacquiao, but it’s too bad the fight with Brook didn’t get made because it would have been a tasty one.
“Amir Khan against Kell Brook is here at last, and it’s going to be an unforgettable night when these two huge names in British boxing finally settle their long-running rivalry,” said Adam Smith of Sky Sports.
“Khan and Brook have been asked about this fight for a decade, despite their success as world champion, and now we will get the answer in February.
“This is a heated feud that has simmered for years, and there’s so much pride at stake. It’s a real 50-50 fight, and we will find out in February who takes it,” said Smith.
You’ve got to give Sky credit for showing courage to put the Khan-Brook fight together because there’s a good chance that the fight fails to bring in vast numbers of PPV buys, given the advanced age of the two former world champions.
Brook lost his last fight to WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford by a fourth round knockout in November 2020 on ESPN PPV. The battle was competitive for the first three rounds before Crawford hurt Brook with a sneaky right hook in the fourth round and quickly put him away with a hail of shots.
Khan is coming off a fourth round knockout of Billy Dib in July 2019 in what was viewed as a business-level fight in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.