Kell Brook announces retirement from boxing three months on from Amir Khan win
- Planet Sport writer
- 7 May 2022
Kell Brook has decided to hang up his gloves at the age of 36, with the Sheffield boxer admitting that his grudge-match victory over Amir Khan brought him peace.
Brook held the IBF welterweight championship between 2014 and 2017, but he is likely to be best remembered by British boxing fans for his victory over Khan back in February.
The boxer told the Sunday Telegraph: "I've had a long chat with my family and my parents, and it's over for me. I'll never box again.
"It's a little emotional to be actually saying this out loud. I think everyone around me is pleased.
"Truth is, boxing is a very, very tough, dangerous sport, one in which you can be legally killed in the ring and I've finished now with all my faculties intact."
Brook famously beat Shawn Porter to claim the world title back in 2014. He went on to make three successful defences before falling to back-to-back defeats against Gennady Golovkin and Errol Spence Jr.
His attempt to regain the world title in 2020 proved unsuccessful as he fell to a fourth round TKO defeat against Terence Crawford in Las Vegas.
After the defeat, Brook looked to be heading for retirement, but the Sheffield-based boxer was lured back into the ring for a long-awaited showdown with Khan.
The Yorkshire fighter won emphatically as his seventh-round knockout produced a memorable end to a successful career.
Brook hangs up his gloves with a record of 40 wins from 43 fights - 28 of them coming by way of knockout.
"I needed the Khan fight, I needed to settle the grudge, the feud. There is no dark feeling left in me now. I think when you have been in the ring with someone it passes, it leaves you," added Brook.
"After that, I don't think I needed to go on anymore. I'm one of the lucky boxers who has earned enough not to have to work, but I am going to give something back again, and I'd like to train or manage young fighters.
"I'd just like to be remembered as a fighter who would go in with anyone, feared no one and who gave the fans what they wanted."
