Kell Brook is demanding a career-best purse of £10million to fight Conor Benn.
Benn’s promoter Eddie Hearn claims that is the sum Brook requested when he offered him a showdown with unbeaten welterweight Benn. Hearn also approached Amir Khan, who lost last month’s grudge match against Brook, and says he too is asking for too much.
Benn’s next outing is against South African Chris van Heerden at Manchester’s AO Arena on April 16 and Hearn remains keen to make a fight with either Brook or Khan. He has had talks with both fighters and will speak to them again about a possible summer bout. “I’ve had quite a few conversations with them,” said the Matchroom chief. “I made an offer to Kell Brook, which was more money than he made to fight Amir Khan. He asked for £10million, which was quite a way off what I offered to be fair! I was like f****g hell!
“Then Khan’s guys came on and said ‘how much would you pay to fight Amir?’. I gave them the same offer I gave Kell Brook and they said ‘surely Amir should get more’ and I said ‘but he’s just lost to him’, so everyone has gone mad. I’d make either one of those fights, if Amir is going to fight again.”
Hearn claims Khan has sounded him out about staging his rematch with Brook after he activated the clause for a second fight. Promoter and BOXXER chief Ben Shalom has the first option with Sky and Hearn suspects they are not keen to stage it because it has little box office appeal.
“Sky only have to do the rematch if it’s commercially viable and if it’s not them, it can go elsewhere,” he said. “Sky don’t want it to go elsewhere, but they don’t really want to do it either.
“Then Amir and his lawyers are saying to me ‘do you want to do it if Sky don’t?’ And I’m like ‘not really’ and he’s like ‘oh s**t!’. But we might do it if the deal is right. Amir in my opinion doesn’t want it anyway. He’s pretending he wants it. Like I said, I would do Amir against Conor.”
Hearn defended his choice of van Heerden as Benn’s next opponent after coming in for much criticism. Hearn feels Benn should take this as a compliment because it means he is already seen as elite level.
“I actually think it’s a really good fight,” he said. “Van Heerden is as tough as nails, he’s quite an emotional guy, he lost his father and this is a dream opportunity. I said to Conor he should take it as a massive compliment that people think that you against van Heerden is a mismatch because I don’t think it is.
“A year ago you were supposedly s**t. Now they’re saying these guys, Algieri, Granados, all are mismatches for you, so they clearly rate you. I’ve said to him after this fight, you have to jump in at the deep end, so enjoy this one because after the summer, it could be Brook, Khan, Broner, Avanesyan. These are the fights he’s going to have.”
