“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.
