Brook says stabbing in Tenerife two weeks after he won IBF welterweight title ‘changed how I look at life’ but that altered world view still includes a showdown with Khan

Searching for Kell Brook on a sunny afternoon in Sheffield is a surreal experience. Rolling up and down the fanciest street in town with only a house name to look for, we meander past one mansion after another. This is not typical boxing terrain. My taxi driver and I are more accustomed to gritty back-street trawling when hunting for a derelict old gym.

The driver, an interesting Asian man who boxed as an amateur, offers a cool appraisal of a possible showdown between Brook and Amir Khan. He comes from Sheffield but the cabby argues in favour of Khan’s fast hands from Bolton deciding a bitter and eagerly awaited clash. Yet, despite his flawless 35-0 record and IBF world welterweight title, Brook remains locked outside the career-defining fight he craves.

Khan, after finally appearing ready to meet Brook at Wembley this summer, has opted for Las Vegas and an even bigger contest against Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez. Real risk is attached because Canelo, an imposing Mexican, operates as a middleweight – two divisions heavier than Khan.

The British welterweights deserve to feature at the highest level of world boxing but, in our taxi, we feel like they have done so often – lost and disorientated in the fight game as yet another high wall or iron gate leads to the next dead end. Brook finally answers his phone. Of course he is not at home. The world champion is where he should be only days from his latest title defence, against the anonymous Canadian Kevin Bizier on Saturday in Sheffield.

Brook is toiling away in the gym in downbeat old Wincobank. This is Brendan Ingle’s famous boxing shrine where he shaped Herol Graham, Naseem Hamed and little Kell Brook.

As soon as I walk through the door to St Thomas’ Brook takes me back to when he was seven and first entered this mysterious place of weaving and punching. He has been a pro for almost 12 years and, only weeks from his 30th birthday, Brook conjures up the fevered atmosphere of a gym packed with small boys dreaming of becoming world champions.

St Thomas’ is deserted now and Brook soon cuts to the heart of his life and describes how elation was swallowed up by despair. “I can’t really explain how high the feeling was winning that world title in California with my family watching me,” Brook says. It was a sticky August night in 2014 when, in Carson, on the fringes of Los Angeles, Brook became only the second British fighter to depose a world champion in the US. Lloyd Honeyghan had made history when shocking Donald Curry in 1986. Brook’s defeat of the unbeaten Shawn Porter felt as seismic to the Sheffield man.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brook overcomes Porter. Photograph: Peter Cziborra/Action Images

“My mum and dad remembered me as a little kid, with teeth missing,” he says. “I had been to the gym and told them I’d become a world champion. So when I became the king of the welterweights I can’t put into words the feeling of seeing my mum and dad upset with joy, seeing my partner, Lindsey. It was a big feeling after the fight, walking in the Californian air, nursing my bruised face with my family. We were looking at each other and they were saying: ‘You’ve done it, son, you’ve done it.’ It lived up to all my fantasies and beyond. It was the best week of my life.”

Brook pauses, his face clouding. “Then, soon after that, came the darkest time, a time when I didn’t think I was going to live. I didn’t think I was going to walk again. I remember laying on a hospital bed in Tenerife and it was shocking.”

The shock of being stabbed so badly while on holiday with Lindsey in Tenerife in September 2014, just over two weeks after he won his world title, seeps through Brook again. “I had no way of knowing if I would walk again. It wasn’t the holiday side of Tenerife. It was the local side of Tenerife and no one really spoke English. I just wanted to know how bad it was and I was getting no answers. I had drips in and it was a nightmare. I was thinking for a long time I wouldn’t walk again.

“It was nearly a week before we finally got hold of someone, a doctor, who could speak decent English. He said: ‘I believe you will make a 100% recovery.’ Plain as day now I can see my mum and dad in that hospital room. We were so emotional, thinking: ‘We’ve got another crack.’”

Brook looks up. “It’s been a rollercoaster. It’s been mad. I needed my family around me to get through that dark time. It’s definitely changed me because, coming out of hospital, it felt like a new world. I felt the breeze and heard the birds singing. I saw the sand and I was thinking: ‘These small things in life are so precious.’ It’s changed how I look at life, how I look at my kids. It had a big effect on me – because I was close to death.”

What happened to the man who stabbed him? “They put an international arrest out on him. He’s still on the run. I didn’t know him before. He was an English guy and they knew I’d just won the world title and they were all excited to be with me, having a drink, celebrating. But you don’t know what’s going on in their minds. This guy was a complete nutter.

“He stabbed me out of the blue. He’s drinking and getting revved up comparing street fighting to boxing. He’s saying: ‘You can do anything in a street fight. You can pick up a knife and stab someone.’ I said: ‘I know. But, in my eyes, if you do that you’re a coward.’ The guy paused for a minute and, then, he jumped up. I’m sitting down. He’s over me with a big knife, saying: ‘Are you calling me a coward?’ He’s in a different world, crazy, and he stabbed me.

“Here’s the sad thing. I’m the nicest kid. I’m not a big head. But, now, whenever I have people around me I feel tense. I can’t have people walking behind me. I hardly go out at night now.”

We have hardly spoken about Bizier and the challenge the Canadian may present on Saturday. He nods when I say the only fact I really know about Bizier is that his two defeats were against Jo Jo Dan – another Canadian-based fighter whom Brook stopped in four rounds last year. It must be hard to motivate himself against Bizier rather than Khan or their American rivals?

“It’s not a huge fight,” Brook admits, “and it has been hard getting up for it. Bizier has not got the Shawn Porter factor, the Keith Thurman factor, the Danny García factor. He doesn’t spread the fear of those American guys. You need that fear – thinking this guy is a machine coming for me. They make you train hard. But Bizier has desire and he will be hungry. I learned that lesson against Carson Jones.”

Brook’s toughest fight, when he almost lost to Jones, was in July 2012. He eventually won a majority decision but he spent much of that night in a Sheffield hospital after his nose was broken badly. “I did underestimate Jones and it were a Gypsy warning, a big wake-up call. I lay in hospital, thinking: ‘This is a game where you can legally get killed if you’ve not done everything right.’ That’s why I’m working hard for Bizier.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brook celebrates victory over Carson Jones at the Motorpoint Arena in Sheffield. Photograph: Paul Thomas/Getty Images

Khan, inevitably, still hangs over Brook. Did he believe their fight was about to happen? “Absolutely. It was close. But you saw him on Twitter. He was talking like he were the champion.”

Unlike Brook, Khan does not hold a world title. But Brook’s camp alleged Khan was demanding 80% of the combined purse. “The Khan kid has delusions. But we weren’t getting dictated to when we are the world champion. I’ll take care of the mandatory [challenge of Bizier] and that will free up some big fights.

“I want Khan but I think his demands were a way of avoiding the fight. He sees it as too much of a risk. He’s gone for Canelo. Even if he loses he can say that big weight difference was the factor. So I understand why he took the fight because there’s also a big pot of money.

“When it first got announced I thought there’s no chance he can beat Canelo. But now I think he could do well. If he listens to his coach and follows the precedent of how to beat Canelo – given in the Floyd Mayweather fight [which Álvarez lost widely] – Khan could do well. I still think Canelo wins. He’s a proud Mexican who will find a way and nail this Khan kid at some point.”

The hype implies the British rivals hate each other – but such venom is rarely true of fighters. “I don’t want him hurt,” Brook says of Khan. “We’re both from Britain and fighting away from home, against these Americans and Mexicans, I want Khan to win. If he does – fantastic. I’m not praying he gets splattered. But when it comes to me and him, in this country, I want to destroy him. He’s got no respect for me and I’ve come up the hard way.”

I have interviewed Brook once before when he used our conversation to address for the first time in public that, as a mixed-race man, he has white parents, Julie and Terry. Many people had assumed he was adopted but Brook explained that his mother had been only 20 when she gave birth. Kell’s biological father, who is black, left them soon afterwards. Fourteen months later his mother met Terry and Kell found a new dad.

“My dad looks after me incredibly,” Brook says of Terry. “If he saw me taking too much punishment he’d step in. I’m actually a mummy’s boy. That’s why it was important we did that interview years ago. It helped people understand me. Now, Lindsey, me and our two girls live in the best area of Sheffield. Our oldest daughter [aged four] is so far ahead of where Lindsey and I were as kids. We want the best for the girls. The best areas, the best schools.

“When I come back from the gym I can’t believe I’m driving up those roads to my house.

“ As a kid, mum and dad would take me to the Toby Carvery for a treat and we’d drive past these big houses with high walls and cameras. I always said I want to live there one day. I do now – but I deserve it. I suffer in the gym every day. I’ve got the black eye to prove it.”

Brook grins as he gestures to his bruised face and imagines the riches of a fight against Khan. “I have a huge house surrounded by luxury but I’ve earned it. That house is beautiful but it’s not quite champion. I have my eyes on something better – the perfect champion’s house. One of those even better houses with the big gates opening up, the long drive, the even bigger mansion. It’s out there – and I will get it.”