Kell Brook: Defeat for Amir Khan is going to ruin his legacy and make mine, he will be retiring after this fight

The mere suggestion of being friends with Amir Khan, even in a different world a million miles away from the boxing ring, draws a quick and dismissive response from Kell Brook. ‘No chance. We have never got on, we’ve never seen eye to eye. There was never a chance of that happening.’

Dating back to their infamous sparring sessions over 15 years ago, the two men, driven by a very genuine contempt for one another, have repeatedly clashed in one of the great British rivalries that almost never was.

Brook, the former IBF welterweight champion, and Khan, Olympic silver medallist and former light-welterweight king, have been kept at a scornful distance over the years while carving out their own legacies in the sport.

At 35 and at the tail end of glorious careers, both men have now fallen from the world title picture and are unlikely to return. But for Brook, retiring from boxing without silencing the man who, in his eyes, has antagonised and disrespected him for the best part of a decade, was not an option. Walking away with his legacy intact and Khan’s broken is the end game.

‘This fight is the one I’ll be remembered for,’ Brook told Metro.co.uk. ‘We will see who the real king of the north is.

‘Making and damaging legacies, that’s what it is, that is the game here. My way is to win it and let him take the backlash and the questions and doubts that come with it. We are putting everything in it here. But I believe like I have always believed that I’m the better man.’

There are countless reasons and excuses why the fight hasn’t taken place earlier, each with varying levels of truth depending on which side of the camp they emerged from.

Khan’s decision to move up to the welterweight division back in 2014 provided us with the first