By Allan Fox: IBF/WBA junior middleweight champion Jarrett Hurd (22-0, 15 KOs) saw nothing but vulnerability from WBC junior middleweight champion Jermell ‘Iron Man’ Charlo (31-0, 15 KOs) last Saturday night in the way that he had to labor hard to defeat former junior middleweight champion Austin Trout (31-5, 17 KOs) by a 12 round majority decision last Saturday night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. The deciding factor in the fight was Charlo’s two knockdowns of Trout in rounds 3 and 9. If not for that, he likely would have come up empty and ended up losing the contest.
”He fight me ANY way like that he’s getting stop! #KeepRunningYourMouth,” Hurd said about Jermell Charlo on his Twitter. ”And y’all really think @TwinCharlo could beat me?”
Al Haymon is said to be looking to make the Charlo vs. Hurd fight next in what will be a huge unification fight on Showtime Championship Boxing. A lot of fans are split in their opinions in which of the two fighters will emerge as the winner in the Charlo-Hurd fight. It’s considered a 50-50 fight I the view of the fans. What we do know is that Hurd, 27, is the bigger, stronger and slightly younger fighter than the 28-year-old Charlo, and he did the better job of beating Austin Trout when he stopped him in the 10th round last October. In fairness to Trout, he was coming off of a long layoff when he fought Hurd and he wasn’t ready to take on a tough opponent like him after being out of the ring for as long as he had. Never the less, with the amount of pressure that Hurd put on Trout in the fight, it’s quite possible the outcome would have been the same even if Austin had been busy fight his career.
Jermell’s 4-fght knockout streak was ended by Trout last weekend. Jermell had been looking very good recently in stopping the likes of John Jackson, Charles Hatley, Erickson Lubin and Joachim Alcine. However, none of those fighters have the same kind of, size, power, chin and pedigree that the 6’1” Hurd has going for him. The only thing that we can conclude from looking at Charlo’s recent knockout string is he fought mostly weak opponents, and not the talented fighters that would tell us anything.
If Hurd chops down Charlo to capture his World Boxing Council 154lb title, it would leave only the WBO belt not in Hurd’s possession. Hurd wants to win all the junior middleweight titles before he moves up tp middleweight, but if it’s not possible to make the fight against WBO 154lb champion Jaime Munguia, then Jarrett will move up to 160.