Former IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook announced his retirement on Saturday, ending his long, mostly successful 18-year career on a high note.
The 36-year-old Brook (40-3, 28 KOs) says he’s retiring with his faculties intact and never need to work again. Brook says he’d like to train fighters so that he will be working in that capacity.
With a reported net worth of $22 million, Brook doesn’t need money, so it’s understandable why he would want to retire now rather than stick it out and potentially lose to one of the young lions in the sport.
Much to the frustration of promoters for Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr, Brook is walking away from those two high-paying fights available to him.
It must be difficult for Brook to retire without fighting the young 25-year-old Benn, as that’s a very winnable fight for him and would have been a massive payday. Even at 36, Brook might have been too much for Benn.
If Brook does choose to stay retired, he’s leaving the sport on a high with his impressive sixth-round stoppage victory over former IBF/WBA light-welterweight champion Amir ‘King’ Khan last February in manchester, England.
Kell Brook’s notable fights:
- Gennadiy Golovkin – TKO 5 loss
- Shawn Porter – UD 12 victory
- Amir Khan – TKO 6
- Errol Spence Jr – KO 11 loss
- Frankie Gavin – TKO 6 win
- Vyacheslav Senchenko – TKO 4 win
- Carson Jones – TKO 8 win
- Terence Crawford – TKO 4 loss
- Matthew Hatton – UD 12 win
In Brook’s loss to IBF/IBO/WBC middleweight champion Golovkin in September 2016, he suffered an eye injury that would slow his career.
Brook gave Golovkin a lot of issues in that fight before he was forced to give up in the fifth due to his eye problem. Despite losing, Brook gave a heroic effort, creating the blueprint for how to defeat Golovkin by backing him up with pressure.
What turned out to be a blunder for Brook was his decision to go straight into a fight against Errol Spence Jr. without taking a warmup fight.
In the Spence fight, Brook suffered another eye injury, resulting in him bowing out in the 11th round after taking a knee. Brook fought Spence to a standstill in the first half of the content before suffering his eye problem.
Brook looked almost as good in that fight as he had in his prime years when he battled Gennadiy Golovkin, Errol Spence Jr, and Shawn Porter.
“I’ve had a long chat with my family and my parents, and it’s over for me. I’ll never box again,” said Brook to The Telegraph.
“It’s a little emotional to be actually saying this out loud. My mum is relieved. I think everyone around me is pleased.
“Truth is, boxing is a very, very tough, dangerous sport, one in which you can be legally killed in the ring, and I’ve finished now with all my faculties intact. I just don’t see it.
“It’s not there anymore,” said Brook about whether he would change his mind to come back in the future.
