By Eric Baldwin: Former heavyweight world title challenger Manuel Charr has reportedly been elevated to interim World Boxing Association heavyweight champion, and he’s expected to fight for a world title in 2017. What’s unknown is WHY the WBA made the 32-year-old Charr (30-4, 17 KOs) their interim WBA heavyweight champion, because he’s lost three out of his last seven fights in the last two years. That’s not a good record.
A fighter with a 4-3 record in his last seven fights really shouldn’t be an interim title holder with any boxing organization in my opinion. The WBA has their reasons for putting Charr in that position.
If you’re a Charr fan, the good news is he’s likely going to be a fighting for a world title in 2017 against either the winner of the Anthony Joshua vs. Wladimir Klitschko fight or the winner of the Shannon Briggs vs. Lucas “Big Daddy” Browne clash.
The WBA has three champions at heavyweight with the WBA ‘Super Championship’ to be fought for by Joshua and Klitschko, the WBA ‘regular’ heavyweight title to be fought for by Briggs and Browne, and now Charr the interim WBA champion. It’s a great way to get sanctioning fee money having all these titles, but it also makes things confusing for the average fan, because it waters down the heavyweight division with a ton of champions. It’s like having three Super Bowl winners rather than just one in the NFL.
Charr said this to the BILD German news site about him defending his WBA interim heavyweight title in January:
“I’ll defend the title in January, and then I’m ready to challenge the world champion,” said Charr. “I want to get the fight in the Cologne Lanxess Arena. I will certainly not be able to compete abroad.”
The move by the WBA to make Charr their interim WBA heavyweight champion is a confusing one that is hard to understand. What does the WBA see in Charr’s recent performances that would put him as a good candidate to be the organization’s interim WBA champion? It would seem like a better idea if the WBA made David Haye their interim WBA champion or Alexander Ustinov.
Those are two good fighters. Neither of them has done much recently, but they haven’t been beaten in three out of their last seven fights like Charr.
What would be troubling is if Charr is the one who winds up facing the winner of the Joshua vs. Klitschko fight rather than someone who has accomplished more in their boxing careers in recent years. In the last three years, Charr has been beaten by Alexander Povetkin, Johann Duhaupas and Mairis Briedis. The loss to cruiserweight Briedis was a pretty shocking one for Charr, because he had a big 30 pound weight advantage in that fight. Briedis is a cruiserweight, and he shouldn’t have been able to beat Charr, and yet he did and he did it easily. Charr has since won his last two fights in beating little known Andrei Mazanik (12-8, 9 KOs) and Sefer Seferi (21-1, 19 KOs). Those are not highly rated fighters.
Charr fought for a world title in 2012 in losing to former World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko by a 4th round knockout. The fight was stopped in the 4th round due to a bad cut that Charr suffered on his right eyebrow. Charr was not happy at all, as he stormed around the ring afterwards and looked very unhappy. You couldn’t blame the ringside doctor for halting the fight though, because Charr was bleeding so badly from his cut. It was the type of cut that would have continue to bleed if the fight had been allowed to go on.
Vitali knocked Charr down in the 2nd round. It wasn’t much of a fight. After that loss, Charr won his next five fights against weak opposition before losing to Povetkin in 2014.
After Charr’s loss to Briedis in 2015, it was thought by some boxing fans that this would be the last they heard of him at the world level in terms of him fighting for any kind of title again.
Charr and Haye were supposed to fight several years ago, but the fight failed to take place due to Haye suffering an injury during training.