IBF chairman Lindsey Tucker tells RIngTV that the organization plans to order Kell Brook’s mandatory title defense against Errol Spence Jr. on October 26th. Brook, who most recently fought at middleweight while challenging Gennady Golovkin, has yet to vacate his welterweight title and may be keeping his options open.

But once the IBF orders the title defense, Brook and Spence will have 30 days to come to terms for the bout otherwise the fight will be ordered to purse bid. Brook and his promoter Eddie Hearn have suggested that he will campaign at junior middleweight once he recovers from broken eye socket, but no formal decisions have been made at this time.

“We’ve heard a lot of rumors,” Tucker told RING. “But on Oct. 26, we’re scheduled to notify Brook to start negotiation with Errol Spence. Now a couple of things could happen. He could say he’s giving up the title to move up in weight. He could come up and say that he suffered from an eye injury and he needs some additional time, so we could give him a medical extension. But we won’t know unless they come to us and say we’re giving up the title — we won’t know anything before then.

“At one point, we heard he was going to move up to junior middleweight and the next thing we heard he was going to stay at welterweight. So we don’t know what’s going on.”

It’s been pretty well-reported that it took a tremendous effort from Brook to make the welterweight limit in the past years, and considering that he bulked up to fight at middleweight just recently there’s some serious doubt that he can even make the 147lb limit going forward. My guess is that Brook will try to string out his options for as long as possible before ultimately making a decision on his future.