Amir Khan vs Kell Brook is on Saturday, live on Sky Sports Box Office; this is the complex and bitter truth about the rivalry which will finally be settled…
The same story is remembered very differently but, 17 years later, recollected with equal venom by both fighters.
Voices are raised and anger flares when Amir Khan and Kell Brook, and their families, recall how they first crossed paths as teenagers leading to bitterness and jealousy that have lasted almost two decades.
Their intense feud will be settled on Saturday in Manchester, live on Sky Sports Box Office, but the root of this rivalry may never be agreed upon.
“We knew about each other,” Brook tells Sky Sports. “He was winning everything, I was winning everything. I knew he was good and vice versa.”
An infamous sparring session, as is so often the case, laid the foundations for a sour future relationship. Khan and Brook briefly shared a ring during a training camp for England Boxing in 2004, both aged 17.
Brook was focused on professional boxing, but had won an amateur tournament which gained him entry to the England set-up.
Khan was a prodigious talent, feted by Team GB, and would win a silver medal a few months later at the 2004 Olympics, becoming a national darling in the process.
