Amir Khan: Kell Brook has to face me at 147

Ok, where shall I start...

Amir Khan has just stated to WBN that he intends to move back down to welterweight after facing Canelo Alvarez, and that although he’s interested in fighting Kell Brook, Brook would have to meet him at 147 for that to be possible.

“With the money that’s going to be on the table, Brook should consider at least one more fight at 147. I think he’d want to take a fight with me. But if it happens, it would have to happen at 147, to be honest. That’s where I’m comfortable. I am interested in that fight so that’s where it would be. 147 would be better for me.”

Now there’s plenty of things that could be read into such a statement, and I’m sure after all the speculation that Kell Brook has little chance of hitting the 147lb mark again after bulking up to middleweight, some might take this as another cop out from Khan to make that fight impossible. Make of that what you will.

But Khan doesn’t stop there. Not only has he recently gone on record basically giving Brook zero credit for stepping up to fight Gennady Golovkin — telling FightHype that Brook only did it for the money, knowing he’d lose — he also contrasts that move with himself, saying the difference between he and Brook moving up in weight was that he was actually beating Canelo before going nighty-night.

Now I did have Khan up on my scorecard at the time of the stoppage, but the official judges did not, which would make that claim false (while also making me feel like a CNN fact-checker).

Khan also goes on to tell WBN that he believes Brook will avoid coming back down to welterweight as a way of circumventing a stiff challenge in Errol Spence, who remains Brook’s mandatory challenger for the IBF title.

“It just shows the type of fighter I am and Brook is. He’s has fought so many mandatories without any problem, but when it comes to fighting a good mandatory, he’s moving up a weight.

“I’m sure if it was another Jo Jo Dan or Kevin Bizier, I’m sure he would have stayed at 147. There’s a difference in going for the big names knowing you’re going to get beat, and people think you’re going to get beat but it takes balls to go in there like with GGG, to fighting someone like Errol Spence where it’s a 50-50 fight.”

And if that’s not enough, Khan seemingly continued to denigrate Brook by saying that perhaps Miguel Cotto might be a good opponent for Brook because he thinks “Cotto is now kind of done.” Then, in the very next sentence, he says that he himself would love a fight against Miguel Cotto!

I mean, seriously?! SERIOUSLY?!

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Khan’s hatred of Brook only rivals that of the obvious disdain between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Only in this instance the fate of the world is not at stake.

[And yes, that last sentence was perhaps slightly exaggerated for emphasis. Or, you know, maybe it wasn’t.]