Manuel Charr vs. Kevin Johnson on April 12th in Germany

By Boxing News - 03/12/2014 - Comments

charr435By Allan Fox: #7 WBC Manuel Charr (25-1, 15 KO’s) will be facing Kevin Johnson (29-5-1, 14 KO’s) next month in a scheduled 12 round bout at the elekom Dome, in Bonn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. Charr will be defending a number of his minor level heavyweight title straps in the fight. This is a fight between two of the former WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko’s previous title challengers. Both Charr and Johnson were easily beaten by Vitali in the past, and both of them have seen their careers stuck in quicksand since then.

Charr has won his last four fights since his 4th round TKO loss to Vitali in 2012, but he also also hasn’t been fighting quality opposition and you’ll still be able to say this after April 12th. In his last four fights, Charr has beaten Konstantin Airich, Yakup Saglam, Oleksiy Maksim and Denis Baktov. Those are weak opponents.

Charr would have put himself back in position for another title shot if he’d been taking on good opponents like Mike Perez, Bryant Jennings, Tyson Fury, Dereck Chisora or Deontay Wilder, but the odds of him beating any of them would be quite low. It would be difficult to picture Charr being able to compete with those guys, and that’s probably why his promoters haven’t been putting him in with guys that would quickly get him another world title shots. There’s much of a risk of him getting beaten again.

Johnson’s career has gone downhill since his loss to Vitali in 2009. He’s lost 4 out of his last 11 fights in defeats against Chisora, Christian Hammer, Tyson Fury and Tor Hammer. He’s taken riskier fights than Charr has, and that explains why he’s been beaten so often. In his last fight, Johnson lost a 12 round unanimous decision to Chisora last February in a one-sided fight. Johnson did little in the fight to try and win, and he just looked like he was trying to survive the 12 round fight instead of win it.

Charr looks like he’s trying to take the backdoor into another world title fight by facing just weak opponents until he gets another world title shot. That’s basically what he did to get picked out by Vitali in 2012 for a world title shot. He hadn’t faced anyone that you could call good, but Vitali still chose him anyway for an easy title defense.



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