IT’S Kell Brook fight week and that means one thing: plenty of questions regarding Amir Khan will be asked in favour of questions regarding his next opponent.
Brook fights the unheralded Michael Zerafa on Saturday (December 8) in Sheffield and is expected to win handily and then call out Amir Khan, or at least mention his name, in the post-fight interview. In a mark of the routine nature of Saturday’s fight, however, Brook feels no way about mentioning Khan – and the fight that seems destined to never happen – before he has even got Zerafa, his Australian fall guy, out of the way.
“What can I say? I think he’s turned his back completely on the British public, because I’ve bent over backwards just to make it happen,” the former IBF world welterweight champion told Sky Sports News.
“I thought when he joined Matchroom, it was a dead cert that it would happen. He actually looked me dead in the eye at Tony Bellew’s last fight and said, ‘We’re going to make the fight,’ and now he’s not doing it.
“What can I say? I’ve done everything I can. Don’t blame me, it’s him.”
Khan, meanwhile, has emerged as a possible opponent for American superstar Terence Crawford in March, and says if he is to fight Brook at some point in 2019 it would need to be at a major UK stadium.
“We’re looking at the Brook fight and it’s a big fight as well, probably one of the biggest in my career,” he said.
“We’re looking at Wembley Stadium, maybe Manchester or Birmingham. But I think Wembley would be the ideal location for me. Watching Anthony Joshua fight there… having 90,000 people would be awesome.”
It would be awesome, Amir. But, at this point, with the fight still seemingly some way off, the sight of them sharing a ring at Ponds Forge Sports Centre would be every bit as awesome.
Former world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury was a guest of Manchester United during their 2-2 draw against Arsenal at Old Trafford last night and has revealed The Theatre of Dreams is his preferred choice of venue for a 2019 rematch against Deontay Wilder.
Fury, a United fan, boxed his way to a draw with Wilder on Saturday in Los Angeles, but next year hopes to settle the score – and the controversy – on English soil.
Talking to BT Sport, Fury said: “Frank Warren said Arsenal but I said, ‘No, let’s have it at Old Trafford.’ Hopefully we can have it here in the summer.”
The consensus view is that Fury was unlucky not to get the nod last weekend and return home to England with Wilder’s WBC world heavyweight title. He was knocked down twice in the 12 rounds they shared – first in the ninth round, then famously in the twelfth – but appeared to do enough, before and even after those moments, to warrant a decision victory at the end of it all.
Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.
“Of course,” he said, when asked if he felt a sense of injustice, “but I’m not going to go on about it forever. Life goes on. I got robbed blind in America, the world knows, it but we’re going to go on and continue to the next fight.
“I don’t like draws. I only like wins.”
The only thing better than a rematch win over Deontay Wilder, it would seem, is a rematch win over Deontay Wilder at The Theatre of Dreams. It is as unlikely as it is appealing, but if anyone can make the impossible happen, it is probably Tyson Fury.
