Amir Khan v Kell Brook: an intriguing clash of bitter rivals in decline

“People know there is genuine dislike between us and that this is a real grudge match which has been waiting to happen for a very long time,” Kell Brook says as he explains why it took just 10 minutes to sell 21,000 tickets and fill every seat in the Manchester Arena for his fight against Amir Khan on Saturday night. Brook and Khan are both 35 years old and so far down the wrong side of the unforgiving boxing hill that even two such proud men don’t dispute the fact that their best days were beaten out of them by superior opponents.

Khan has not fought for two and a half years and the most vivid memories from the latter stages of his career are of him being knocked out frighteningly by Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez in 2016 and being stopped by Terence Crawford three years later. The fact that Álvarez and Crawford are two of the three best pound-for-pound fighters in the world at least shows that Khan was crushed by supreme talents.

The three painful defeats on Brook’s record were between 2016 and 2020 and also against stellar opposition. His last fight, when he was stopped brutally in the fourth round by Crawford in December 2020, was not as damaging as his earlier losses to Gennady Golovkin and Errol Spence – two brilliant fighters who each broke one of Brook’s eye-sockets.

It does not take long to construct a sensible argument that both Brook and Khan should have opted for retirement. Instead they finally meet in Manchester 10 years after this bout was first hyped as an unmissable contest between two bitter local rivals from the north – with Brook being from Sheffield and Khan from Bolton. When they were both on the rise they were exciting and courageous, if always vulnerable, and credit should be given to both men for all that