Jeff Horn lines up next fight against Englishman Kell Brook
Jeff Horn’s hopes for a Battle of Britain against English boxing hero Kell Brook are ramping up with negotiations for a Sheffield slugfest in May.
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Jeff Horn’s hopes for a Battle of Britain against English boxing hero Kell Brook are ramping up with negotiations for a Sheffield slugfest in May.
The fight could be held at Bramall Lane, the 32,000-seat home of the Sheffield United football team, and the venue where Brook lost his IBF world welterweight title against Texan southpaw Errol Spence in 2017.
Horn’s trainer Glenn Rushton singled out Brook as Horn’s preferred target immediately after the “Fighting Schoolteacher’s” 96-second destruction of Anthony Mundine at Suncorp Stadium on November 30 and promoter Dean Lonergan and matchmaker Stuart Duncan are now working to make the fight a reality.
Rushton said Brook was a huge name in the sport but that the Queensland boxing star had the style and power to dominate him.
“Kell Brook is the fight we really want,” Rushton said.
“We’ve always chased the biggest names in the sport and Brook is one of the big stars of British boxing. A huge win in England will give Jeff an even greater global platform as he chases a second world title.”
Horn, 30, hopes to use Brook as the next step towards winning a world championship in the 70kg light-middleweight division after having won the 66kg welterweight title in 2017 against Manny Pacquiao at Suncorp Stadium.
The 32-year-old Ezekiel “Kell” Brook has a record of 38 wins in 40 fights.
He leapt to prominence with a spirited 12-round victory over Sydney’s former world champ Lovemore Ndou in Sheffield in 2011 and was undefeated in his first 36 bouts.
In 2016 he made the bold but disastrous leap from the welterweight division to fight the world’s hardest hitting middleweight (72.5kg) Gennady Golovkin and although he outboxed Golovkin early Brook’s corner threw in the towel in the fifth round.
Brook lost his IBF world welterweight title to Spence in his next fight on an 11th round stoppage.
He looked lacklustre outpointing Melbourne’s Michael Zerafa in his last start at the Sheffield Arena last month and Lonergan says he’s ready to be taken.
“I’ve got a text into (Brook’s promoter) Eddie (Hearn) at the moment, my matchmaker has an email and a phone call into Eddie, we love this fight, to have Jeff Horn fight Kell Brook,” Lonergan told Britain’s Sky Sports.
“If you were going to do it, you would definitely go to England, because the boxing market up there is on fire, and Kell Brook in Sheffield, which is where he comes from, you’re definitely going to be filling a stadium wherever you go.”
Brook has long been chasing an all-English battle against arch rival Amir Khan but Khan is now set to face Horn’s nemesis Terence Crawford at New York’s Madison Square Garden on April 20.
Crawford stopped Horn in nine rounds in Las Vegas in June to win the WBO welterweight title Horn had taken from Pacquiao.
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Originally published as Jeff Horn lines up next fight against Englishman Kell Brook
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