THEY say that a fighter is often the last to know when it’s time to retire. This is a truth that nobody who watched Kell Brook’s defeat against pound-for-pound king Terence Crawford at the MGM in Vegas last weekend would disagree with.

A pro for 17 years, the 34-year-old former IBF welterweight world champion fought like an ageing gunslinger desperate to defy Father Time against a much younger challenger, having convinced himself that he still had what it took regardless of the evidence to the contrary — evidence staring him in the face.

In the case of Brook this is a face that has been subjected to two reconstructive surgeries in the past five years to repair two shattered orbital bones: the first against Gennady Golovkin in 2015, the second against Errol Spence in 2017.