By Keith Idec
Errol Spence Jr. appreciates that he’s getting an opportunity to realize his longtime dream.
The undefeated contender still thinks Kell Brook is getting too much credit for agreeing to make a mandated defense of his IBF welterweight title. Brook has mostly been applauded by boxing fans and media for remaining at 147 pounds to face Spence, the IBF’s No. 1 contender, on May 20 in Brook’s hometown of Sheffield, England.
“He’s a great fighter, but he’s getting too much credit for fighting me,” Spence told BoxingScene.com on Monday after learning that the deal was done. “Who else was he gonna fight at 147? Nobody. Who was he gonna fight at 154? He couldn’t fight someone else at 147, because if he didn’t fight me they would say he was ducking me.
“Who was he gonna fight at 54? There was nobody for him to fight at 54, no big names, the names he wanted. So he had to fight me. Everybody knows he took Triple-G for the money, so I do think he’s getting too much credit for taking this fight.”
Eddie Hearn – whose company, Matchroom Sport, promotes Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) – negotiated with fellow Brit Amir Khan (31-4, 19 KOs) for a domestic clash that would’ve done big business in the United Kingdom.
They couldn’t agree on a revenue split Hearn would’ve considered fair, however, and talks broke off recently. Hearn also has acknowledged having conversations with Puerto Rican icon Miguel Cotto (40-5, 33 KOs), whose February 25 pay-per-view junior middleweight fight against James Kirkland (32-2, 28 KOs) was canceled earlier this month reportedly because Kirkland suffered a broken nose in training.
Those talks didn’t lead to a deal, either, but the 27-year-old Spence (21-0, 18 KOs) considers the aforementioned negotiations proof that Brook doesn’t really want to fight the hard-hitting southpaw from DeSoto, Texas.
“He was trying to find a way out,” said Spence, a 2012 Olympian. “First he was looking for another title-holder. He was looking to fight either Danny Garcia or Keith Thurman. But they’re fighting each other, so he was looking for Manny Pacquiao. Manny Pacquiao wasn’t interested, so he was trying to fight Amir Khan. Then that fell through, so I was high last option.
“There was nobody at 154 for him to fight. Canelo already had a fight with somebody and the rest of the guys are with Al Haymon. He really didn’t have any options but to fight me, so that’s where he went.”
Hearn and promoter Tom Brown, who represented Spence in negotiations, informed the IBF on Monday to cancel a purse bid scheduled for Tuesday at the IBF’s headquarters in Springfield, New Jersey, because they had reached an agreement.
The 30-year-old Brook will move back down to 147 pounds to box Spence. He moved up two weight classes, to 160 pounds, for his last fight – a fifth-round technical knockout defeat to Kazakhstan’s Gennady Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) on September 10 at O2 Arena in London.
Brook suffered a broken right orbital bone in his loss to Golovkin, which required surgery.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.