When is Amir Khan vs Kell Brook? Date and everything else we know as grudge match is confirmed for 2022

Kell Brook told Amir Khan he plans to “take his chin clean off his head” as the pair’s long-awaited grudge match was confirmed on Monday.

It’s 11 years since the “Special One” first called out Khan but after failed negotiations to make the fight happen in 2017, they will finally clash at 149lb on 19 February in Manchester.

Weight has long been a contentious issue – as well as the purse split – between the two camps.

As a deal was finally agreed, Brook warned: “February 19 is when Amir Khan hits the deck for the final time.”

The Sheffield fighter, 35, will be under scrutiny to make weight as Khan made a number of jibes about his fitness. “They say he’s in good shape – he looks like a blob to me,” Khan said. “You chat so much s____, you look overweight.”

The pair have known each other for 17 years, dating back to their amateur days. The animosity that has developed in the meantime, Khan insists is down to “jealousy”, and in particular of his silver Olympic medal and celebrity lifestyle. “I got picked for the Olympic team because I was schooling Kell with one hand,” he said.

In the time that has elapsed since, both have mixed it with some of the world’s best pound-for-pound fighters: Khan brutally knocked out by Canelo Alvarez, Brook beaten by Gennady Golovkin and Errol Spence Jr.

Khan has been out of the ring for two years, a hiatus he suggests has led to him dropping “a few levels” to meet his old adversary.

“Levels below you?” Brook responded. “He lives in cuckoo land. He needs to go back on [I’m a Celebrity] in the jungle. I am going to knock you spark out… Forget boxing, I’m coming for a pub fight, a car park scrap.”

In spite of offers from Dubai and Saudi Arabia, the bout will take place in the north of England to attract both fighters’ considerable fanbases and with a 20,000 capacity, the Manchester Arena is almost certain to sell out.

It is, in spite of the delays and the fact that both are now approaching the end of their careers, a fight that the fans have been demanding. That is who it is ultimately for, insists Khan.

“I’ve never ran from anyone, I’ve never needed to, my record in the sport speaks for itself… At times in the past I didn’t think he deserved the fight. Now I’m ready to put him in his place… people want to see me punch him in the face”.

Repeatedly accusing Brook of taking the fight only “for the payday”, the hatred between the two remains as genuine and bitter as it ever was.

Once, titles might have been on the line, but as the two pre-eminent welterweights on the British scene, it is a fight that will go some way towards defining both their legacies.