By Mike Smith: Jermall Charlo is hoping to get fights against popular middleweights Saul Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin in 2019, but he remains doubtful that either of those fights will take place next year. Interim WBC 160 pound champion Charlo (27-0, 21 KOs) is Canelo’s mandatory challenger, but he’s not getting help by the World Boxing council in getting the title shot against the Mexican star that he’s earned.
WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman said this week that his organization will be ordering a fight between Charlo and #1 WBC Golovkin (38-1-1, 34 KOs) in a final eliminator after this Saturday’s fight between Jermall and Matt Korobov (28-1, 14 KOs). Golovkin vs. Charlo would be a final eliminator. The winner would then would be the one that gets a shot against Canelo for a fight that would likely take place in 2020. It’s widely believed that Canelo will face International Boxing Federation middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs on May 4 in a unification fight. If Canelo wins that fight, it’s very likely that he’ll get permission by the WBC to face WBO 160 lb champion Demetrius Andrade in October 2019. In the meantime, the winner of the Golovkin-Charlo fight would need to keep busy while they wait for the WBC to order Canelo to fight them.
“You want me to lie to you? Alright,” Jermall said to Fighthub when asked if he thinks he’ll get fights against Canelo and GGG in 2019. “We should be seeing this in 2019, right? That’s what you all want to see? Tell the people that then. I want to fight. I already told you I want to fight. I don’t care what the situation is, I don’t care what happened. I want to fight,” Charlo said.
Charlo is a victim of being too talented for his own good. Boxing is setup in a different way than other sports like the NFL and NBA, which require the top teams to fight other high quality teams. In the sport of boxing, fighters and their clever promoters are able to swerve the talented contenders and take lesser guys in showcase fights to stay at the top. The sanctioning bodies often don’t help matters by enabling a cherry-picking fighter by allowing them to take on lesser guys without ordering them to face the best. You can argue that if the WBC was doing their job proplerly, they would have already ordered Canelo to face Charlo after his fight against WBA super middleweight champion Rocky Fielding last Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in New York. Canelo chose not to defend his WBA and WBC middleweight titles that he won off GGG last September. The WBC allowed Alvarez to fight Fielding, and that effectively allowed him to bypass all the top contenders in the WBA and WBC top 15 at middleweight
” I want to see how talented I am against whoever out there. I don’t care about being an undefeated fighter, or being this big role model to everybody. I’m not trying to put on a persona, I’m not faking it. I want to fight. I want to see all this work that me and Ronnie Shields been doing. What is this about? Is it real?
It’s unknown why the WBC is going to try and have Golovkin take care of Canelo’s WBC mandatory challenger Charlo, who earned the mandatory spot in 2017 in beating Jorge Sebastian Heiland by a 4th round knockout. Charlo should be getting a title shot against Canelo instead of having to take a match against GGG.
If Golovkin chooses not to fight Charlo, then the WBC will need to select someone else from their top 15 to fight him. This could be potentially embarrassing for the WBC and Canelo if the sanctioning body is unable to get any of the top 15 contenders to agree to fight Charlo for the right to face Canelo. It’s not that the contenders don’t want to fight Alvarez. It’s more of a case where the contenders don’t want to have to go through charlo to get that title shot. Its too tough of a fight for it to be worthwhile in making it. It’s unlikely that GGG will agree to fight Charlo, because he doesn’t need to work to get the third fight with Canelo. He’ll get it anyway sooner or later. It’s just that Golovkin might need to wait until September 2019 or early 2020.
Here are the options the WBC will need to pick from to order Charlo to fight if GGG rejects the final eliminator against him:
2. Martin Murray
3. David Lemieux
4. Kamil Szeremeta
5. Willie Monroe Jr.
6. Jason Quigley
7. Jack Culcay
8. Yamaguchi Falcao
9. Luis Arias
10. Hugo Centeno, Jr.
11. Immanuwel Aleem
12. Ievgen Khytrov
13. Esquivia Falcao
14. Mark Heffron
15. Steve Rolls
Charlo will likely have no problems beating all the guys on the list. The WBC might as well order Canelo to fight Charlo without making him go through a needless step to get the title shot against him, as he’s not going to be tripped up by any of these fighters.
“Ya’ll got to get on the phone with DAZN, DOZEN, a dozen couple fighters with a couple dozen losses. They gonna be whatever we call ‘em. So, yeah, ya’ll gotta get on the line with those guys. Oscar De La Hoya never gave me a chance. I ain’t never sign with Golden Boy,” Charlo said.
It’s unlikely that Golden Boy Promotions is going to let Charlo and his brother Jermell Charlo get a chance to fight Canelo. Charlo isn’t old, and you can argue that aging him won’t work like it did with Golovkin.
