Kell Brook wants to make it clear he has no animosity for his longtime promoter Edie Hearn.
The former welterweight titleholder from Sheffield, England accomplished many of his biggest feats in the ring under Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing banner, including his title win on the road against Shawn Porter in Carson, California in 2014. But Brook has been a free agent in the past several years; he negotiated the Terence Crawford bout in 2020 on his own, which did not go down well with Hearn.
The split between the former tandem has played out entirely amicably, as both have taken shots at each other through the press, with Hearn at one point saying he felt betrayed by Brook’s attempts to obtain the Crawford fight. Brook (39-3, 27 KOs) ended up getting stopped by Crawford (38-0, 29 KOs) inside four rounds.
“Once you turn your back on me, don’t ever turn round and start walking back to me,” Hearn told TalkSport in 2020. “You’re either with me or you’re not.”
Brook, however, defended his actions recently, saying that Hearn simply had too much on his promotional plate to really cater to his needs, which includes the welfare of his family.
“This is a sport where I had both my eye sockets [damaged],” Brook told IFL TV. “This is a sport you can legally get killed in. It got to the stage where I was being put on the shelf, you know? I’m self-managed. I went out there and got the Crawford fight.
“At the end of the day when it’s all said and done, I want to be out of this sport with a bag full of money for my girls. I’m not gonna go worry about Eddie putting me on the shelf. He didn’t mean to put anyone on the shelf. He’s just got too many fighters and that many dates to get these top prizefighters out [in the ring] in a certain amount of time. If he can’t make certain super fights for the fighters, the fighters aren’t gonna get no money.”
Although he says he does not begrudge Hearn for having so many duties, Brook pointed out that he feels Hearn has a degree of stability by virtue of his position as a top promoter in the sport that he, as a fighter, does not have.
“He’s got millions of fighters, he’s getting millions off everyone,” Brook said of Hearn. “He’s always up, always delivering the big fights, and he obviously takes his percentage, he’s always getting his fights. But the fighters need to get in their fight, so that’s how it's played out, basically.”
Brook will enter yet another fight outside of Hearn’s orbit on Feb. 19 when he takes on bitter rival Amir Khan (34-5, 21 KOs) – and fellow former Hearn client – at Manchester Arena in Manchester, England. The fight will air in the UK on Sky pay-per-view and is being promoted by Boxxer. Hearn used to be the main promoter for Sky but the longstanding relationship came to an end last summer when he announced a multi-year deal with the streaming platform DAZN.
Brook reiterated that his decision to leave Hearn was “business,” and nothing more than that.
“If it was the right move or if it was the wrong move, could it have been a better deal, could it not have been a better deal – at the time, it was what I needed to do,” Brook said. “I needed to be active, I need to get more money. I need to be active and have a fight. On my side I’ll always have love in my heart for Eddie Hearn. You can ask him the same question.”
“It’s business at the end of the day,” Brook continued. “[Hearn] got me into that position to become world champion. He did everything for me. But he has all these fighters. It’s hard to keep everyone happy, basically. There’s no bad blood on my side. I don’t know about him. I don’t know what he thinks of me, but that’s it for me. At the end of the day it’s business.”
