Kell Brook: Fight with Amir Khan ‘must happen’ this year

Kell Brook will return to the ring on March 3, when he faces Sergey Rabchenko in his hometown of Sheffield. Amir Khan will return to the ring on April 21, following a nearly two-year layoff.

If both win, Brook thinks that the time to finally make a fight between the two U.K. stars is now:

“It’s great news for boxing. We’re with the same team with Matchroom now, so surely it must happen now. Surely it must happen this year. He’s saying it could be the third fight. I’ve been ready for a long time. Now we’re together in the same camp, let’s make it happen baby. Let’s make it happen.”

Brook (36-2, 25 KO) has lost two straight, first taking a daring jump to middleweight with a loss to Gennady Golovkin in September 2016, and then losing his welterweight title to Errol Spence Jr last May.

Now 31, Brook is moving to junior middleweight to face Rabchenko (29-2, 22 KO), a solid test at a new weight, and the right sort of fight as he tries to bounce back with a victory.

The weight could be an issue, as Khan (31-4, 19 KO) is coming back at welterweight.

“We’re going to sit down, piles of money in the pot, and we sort it out when the time comes. When that fight is ready to happen. We’re all going to sit down and make it happen. Make it rain. That could be at catchweight, we don’t know.

“Until we’re ready to fight and everyone is 100 per cent it’s going to happen, then we can decide on what the weight is and the ins and outs of it.”

Khan’s April opponent has not been named.