Trading leather with a man as comparably large and formidable as Gennady Golovkin was always a quixotic task for Sheffield's welterweight world champion Kell Brook, but the 30-year-old's stock has well and truly risen since his fifth round TKO defeat.
Brook has always been a sublimely talented and compelling fighter to watch, but his 13-pound climb towards the middleweight division and subsequently enthralling fight versus Triple G seemed - in no small part thanks to Sky Sports' oddly fishy promotion - to capture the imagination of the UK and Irish sporting public.
With a couple of flashy combinations against the Kazakh bomber, Brook has crossed over into mainstream consciousness, earning adulation from a proud British public for his bravery in throwing down with such a frightening middleweight champion.
There's now an almost palpable interest in where Brook goes next or, more pertinently, to whom he goes next, with HBO in America rumoured to be extremely keen to bring the once-beaten boxer-puncher back to America, where he won his welterweight title vs Shawn Porter in 2014. Were he to lace up Stateside and fight on a HBO pay-per-view he'd need a suitably big-named opponent, and they don't come much bigger than Mexican superstar Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez.
Speaking to Sportsmail, Brook's promoter Eddie Hearn said:
There is already interest from HBO in a fight between Canelo Alvarez and Kell next May. That’s a fight Kell would absolutely love and has said so to me himself.
A clash between the pair would presumably take place between 154 and 156 pounds as Canelo attempts to physically grow into the middleweight division, and his own future clash with Gennady Golovkin. But Hearn is keen to stress that Brook's comeback fight (which should take place next spring or summer depending on whether or not he requires surgery for a broken orbital bone) doesn't necessarily have to come against Alvarez, and claims he'd be willing to try and make the fight British boxing has been shouting about for the past two years:
Common sense would also suggest that the fight Britain wants to see with Amir Khan should also be possible.
Then there’s Miguel Cotto, which would be a huge fight. They are the three main ones we are looking at for his comeback. We want to go straight into a big one.
Brook vs Khan is a guaranteed Wembley sell-out and mammoth PPV event, so with both men coming off losses against the two best middleweights on the planet, now might be the perfect time to pencil it in. Cotto, too, would be a mouth-watering clash stylistically and a huge fight were the Puerto Rican future Hall of Famer willing to travel to the UK.
Even before his gallant defeat to GGG, Brook would have fancied his chances against all three. The 'plucky underdog' narrative would need to be abandoned should Hearn lure one of them into the ring next year. It could make for a career-defining fight for the man who became a crossover star within 20 minutes last Saturday night.
