Kell Brook says a rematch between him and IBF welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. is possible. Brook wants a big fight after he takes a tune-up on June 1 on the Anthony Joshua vs. Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Since a fight between Brook and Amir Khan doesn’t look like a viable option for the time being, Spence might be an interesting fight. However, it might depend on who Brook fights on June 1, and how good he looks. Brook needs a fight against Spence to help make a match against Khan bigger. Their careers are not going well at this point. khan is fighting WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford on April 20, and he’s likely to lose that fight. Brook is no longer doing anything but taking tune-ups, and talking nonstop about wanting to fight Khan. There are still many boxing fans that want to see Khan and Brook fight each other, but not likely as many as before when the two of them were world champions and still taking chances.
Brook was stopped in the 11th round by Spence two years ago in May 2017 in Sheffield, England. Brook held his own for the first five rounds against an aggressive Spence, but then things fell apart for him after he suffered a broken eye socket in the sixth. The fight was downhill from there with Brook not fighting as aggressively as he had earlier, and being forced to take a lot of heavyweight shots to the head and body.
“That fight is still there. He still mentions my name, he still would like to fight me, because he knows I was beating him,” Brook said to skysports.com. “A 100 per cent me, beats Errol Spence. I was far from 100 per cent, and I was beating him, and the eye went. I would love that fight again,” Brook said.
Spence would probably give Brook a rematch if he was fighting in the same division as him at welterweight, and if he was still fighting quality opposition. Let’s face it; Brook has stopped fighting top notch opposition since his loss to Spence two years ago. Brook has fought only twice since then, beating Sergey Rabchenko and Michael Zerafa. Those are low level opposition. It was perfectly reasonable for Brook to take the tune-up fight against Rabchenko in March of 2018. After, Brook was coming off his second broken eye socket in his 11th round TKO loss to Spence at the time.
Brook’s previous broken eye socket, which occurred to his right eye, came against former IBF/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin in September 2016. with Brook suffering eye socket injury against Spence, he took it easy when he came back last year against Rabchenko. Brook stopped Rabchenko in the third round. It was believed that Brook would step it up after that against one of the top fighters in the 154 lb division, as he was now campaigning in this weight class, and he was supposedly going to clean up the division. Instead of doing that, Brook shocked a lot of his boxing fans by taking another tuneup fight, this time against Michael Zerafa last December in beating him by a 12 round decision.
The idea behind Brook fighting Zerafa was he needed a good win to help setup his big money fight against Amir Khan. When that fight failed to happen, Brook was left without an opponent to fight. Although Brook has had offers to fight the lions in the junior middleweight division, he’s not agreed to fight any of them, and instead he’s mostly been talking about the Khan fight. Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn has admitted that he’s waiting for the Khan fight.
The news of Brook fighting on the undercard of the Anthony Joshua vs. Jarrell Miller on Monday was net little enthusiasm by the boxing public, since they see it as another weak opponent for Brook, who is more interested in playing it safe with his career now than taking on serious challenges that would make him a popular fighter. For that reason, there’s nothing for Spence to gain by giving Brook a rematch now. Brook can change that if he beats a high caliber fighter in his next contest on June 1. If Brook can beat someone like Jarrett Hurd, Tony Harrison, Shawn Porter, Keith Thurman, Jaime Munguia or Jermell Charlo, spence would likely look at him in a different light and would throw him a bone by giving him a rematch. Right now though, Brook has taken backwards to earlier elementary stage when he was fighting fodder opposition when he first started out 12 years ago. Why Brook feels he needs to do this with his career is the big question. It could be that his two broken eye sockets that he suffered against GGG and Spence has effected him to the point where he no longer trusts whether he can hold it together against guys that pack a punch and possess talent.