Kell Brook has had to withdraw from his scheduled bout with IBF champion Devon Alexander due to a stress fracture in his right foot.
This is the third time the clash has been cancelled due to injury.
ThaBoxingVoice caught up with the Englishman’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, to discuss the injury and what’s next for ‘The Special One.’
“This happened about a week ago,” he said. “We sat down with the doctors and they said, ‘The very best that can happen is that he rests it for three weeks; no sparring, no running.’ That would have left him with three days of sparring before flying out to America.”
Brook had desperately wanted to fight but after discussions with team and specialists, decided that withdrawal was the only course of action.
“As much as he wanted to fight he couldn’t. To give it all away just to go out there and try to beat someone like Devon Alexander at 50 percent [fitness] wouldn’t really do himself justice. It was a real difficult decision because he wants to fight but in the grand scheme of things we had to make the right decision unfortunately,” said Hearn, clearly disappointed.
It remains to be seen what course of action the IBF will take, as the 26-year-old is currently the mandatory challenger for Alexander. Hearn revealed what he sees as the only possible outcomes.
“The actual rules are that they [the IBF] have to go down the list to find the next available contender who will be his [Alexander’s] mandatory challenger.”
He continued, “I don’t know whether he’ll [Alexander] have a voluntary defence and we’ll wait till the next fight to be the mandatory or what but there is a chance we could lose our mandatory position, unfortunately.”