By Edward Chaykovsky
Retired super middleweight champion Carl Froch is shaking his head at the crumbled negotiations to stage a May fight between IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) and Bolton star Amir Khan (31-4, 19 KOs).
Earlier this week, the negotiations fell apart between the two camps, after Khan stood firm on a 70-30 monetary split to do the fight with Brook - who was looking for something that was more in line of an even 50-50.
Brook is still very willing to negotiate the terms and make the fight happen in May, but says Khan is making things very difficult with his "extreme" demands.
Brook has been out of the ring since suffering a stoppage loss last September, when he moved up by two weight divisions to challenge middleweight king Gennady Golovkin at the O2 Arena in London.
Khan was been away since last May, when he moved up to a catch-weight of 155 and was knocked out by Saul "Canelo" Alvarez at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Froch agrees that Khan deserves more money, maybe even a 60-40 split, but he feels that a 70-30 demand is a nice way of pricing yourself out.
"Amir Khan has not held a world title for the best part of five years maybe. You might want to check the stats and I could be wrong, but I'm not far off that. Kell Brook is a world champion. He lost to Golovkin, but he's never been wiped out," Froch told IFL TV.
"From my point of view, and I don't want to give Amir Khan too much stick. But to put it short, that 70-30 demand that he's asking for is absolutely ridiculous. I do believe that maybe he deserves a bigger slice of the cake.... maybe 60-40 because of his name... because he is a bigger name than Kell."
"But 70-30 for me, that tells me that he doesn't want the fight.... for whatever reason, because that's called pricing yourself out. I'm not impressed with that. I don't really want to give Amir Khan too much stick, but I'm really disappointed with that negotiations tactic. I hope it happens, it must happen, and I think it will happen. But that [demand by Khan] is ridiculous."
