By Keith Idec

Kell Brook wasn’t bluffing.

Lindsey Tucker, the IBF’s championships chairman, confirmed to BoxingScene.com on Monday that a purse bid for the Brook-Errol Spence Jr. welterweight title fight has been canceled because the two sides have reached an agreement for a May 20 fight in Brook’s hometown of Sheffield, England. The purse bid, originally scheduled for February 7 at the IBF’s headquarters in Springfield, New Jersey, had been postponed a week ago until Tuesday because promoters for Brook and Spence had made significant progress toward reaching a deal.

Eddie Hearn, Brook’s promoter, and promoter Tom Brown, who’s representing Spence, reached an agreement Monday and informed the IBF to cancel Tuesday’s purse bid.

Spence (21-0, 18 KOs), a powerful southpaw from DeSoto, Texas, is the mandatory challenger for Brook’s IBF 147-pound title. Hearn had encouraged Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) skip the Spence fight to move up to 154 pounds because Brook has such trouble making the 147-pound limit.

Hearn also had negotiated with Amir Khan (31-4, 19 KOs) for what would’ve been a lucrative domestic showdown in England, but they couldn’t come to a financial agreement. Hearn acknowledged discussions with Miguel Cotto, too, but talks with Puerto Rico’s Cotto (40-5, 33 KOs) never really intensified.

With those two high-profile options off the table, Brook refused to give up his title and will oppose Spence in his first fight since moving up two weight classes to challenge Kazakh knockout artist Gennady Golovkin in a middleweight title fight. Brook underwent surgery after sustaining a fractured orbital bone around his right eye during a fifth-round technical knockout loss to Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) on September 10 at O2 Arena in London.

Brook had another two weeks to decide whether to give up his IBF welterweight title. The IBF granted him a two-month medical extension to determine whether he wanted to make his mandatory defense because Brook still was recovering from surgery.

That 60-day medical extension, which the IBF approved late in October, didn’t start until December 26 because that’s the date by which Brook’s mandatory defense was due.

Spence knocked out Italy’s Leonard Bundu (33-2-2, 12 KOs) in the sixth round of his last fight, August 21 in Brooklyn, New York.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.