By Victor Salazar
New York - Many hardcore boxing fans are eager to witness a showdown between IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (36-1, 25 KO’s) and his mandatory challenger Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KO’s).
Brook is coming off a stoppage loss to unified middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (36-0, 33 KO’s), where Brook jumped up two weight divisions to compete with one of the most avoided fighters in the sport. Ultimately, Brook gave a good account of himself in the loss - but the power of Golovkin was too much to overcome.
Spence is coming off a year that saw him knock out Chris Algieri (24-3, 8 KO’s) on Spike TV and destroy Leonard Bundu (33-2-2, 12 KO’s) on NBC - which had over 6 million viewers.
Brook vs. Spence is one of the best fights to make in the sport - but the popular Sheffield fighter has a number of options.
Among those options is a massive UK showdown with country rival Amir Khan (31-4, 19 KO’s), and a possible move to 154 pounds to compete with in a more comfortable weight class.
According to his promoter, the decision is ultimately up to Brook whether he stays or moves out of the division.
“If we want to stay at 147, we have to fight Errol Spence,” Hearn told BoxingScene.com. “The purse bid is 75-25 to the champion, so if I lost the bid then Kell Brook is a very rich man for traveling to fight Spence in the US. 160 was a big jump, he was comfortable there though. He was eating and he was happy, so I think he’d be great at 154. But if he had to, he would make 147.
Hearn feels that fans should understand that in the sport of boxing there’s a risk versus reward equation and sometimes it comes down to more than the fighter wanting a fight.
“Fans have to realize when you sit down with fighter, manager, and father, there’s a lot of financials that take place. There’s probably three times as much money in fighting Amir Khan than fighting Errol Spence and three times an easier fight - and those are things that are discussed with the whole team.”
