Matchroom's Barry Hearn has told Sky Sports that an all-British showdown between Sheffield's IBF welterweight titlist Kell Brook and Bolton-based rival Amir Khan is no longer a viable fight following Khan’s KO loss to WBC middleweight holder Saul Alvarez in Las Vegas earlier this month.
Despite boxing well early, Khan was caught with a huge right hand in round six. It was a bad knockout defeat and Hearn has rubbed salt into Khan’s wounds by dismissing any notion of a showdown with Brook whilst also imploring the 29-year-old to retire from the sport.
“Listen, the guy has been knocked out at lightweight, he's been knocked out at light-welterweight, now he's been knocked out at middleweight—and he's deciding who he'll want to fight?” blasted Hearn.
“He should retire. He should retire for his own health. These people won't listen. He says he's got three or four fights left in him. Does that mean three or four times he's going to get knocked out? Because if he fights Kell Brook, he gets knocked out, and he knows that as well. We all know that.
“It's a fight that we would all have loved to have seen, but frankly it's gone past it's sell-by date and Amir Khan has gone by his sell-by date as well. The only person who doesn't know it, is Amir Khan.”
Still, Khan has options on the table as the WBC have confirmed that he is still the mandatory challenger for Danny Garcia’s welterweight belt.
Hearn, though, has already written Khan off should that one materialise, saying: “The only people that will box him, Danny Garcia maybe, (will do it) because they are looking for an easy fight and Amir's an easy fight.”
However, Khan will argue that his stock is still high in America, so he should still be able to make big fights as long as he manages to secure the Garcia fight then engineer a revenge win over the man who stopped him in four in 2012.
Article courtesy of Boxing Scene
