Jermall Charlo vs. Dennis Hogan on December 7 on SHOWTIME

Image: Jermall Charlo vs. Dennis Hogan on December 7 on SHOWTIME
By Boxing News - 09/25/2019 - Comments

By Matt Lieberman: Dennis Hogan (28-2-1, 7 KOs) will be moving up to 160 to challenge WBC middleweight champion Jermall Charlo (29-0, 21 KOs) for his title on December 7 on Showtime Championship Boxing, possibly at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, according to @MikeCoppinger.

Size mismatch with Charlo-Hogan fight

Charlo, 6’0″, will receive a lot of criticism for choosing to defend against Hogan instead of picking a top contender at 160. In Charlo’s last title defense of his WBC belt, he easily defeated Brandon Adams (21-3, 13 KOs) by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision on June 29. This was a voluntary defense for Charlo.

Now Jermall is about to take another voluntary defense against the much shorter Hogan, will be giving away 4 inches in height and 5 inches in reach. On paper, Charlo vs. Hogan isn’t a fair fight. With this kind of match-making, Charlo will hold onto his WBC middleweight title for many years to come. The negative about that is he won’t become a star, and won’t get any of the popular fighters to face him.

Hogan coming off loss to Jaime Munguia

Charlo vs. Hogan will headline the Showtime card on the 7th of December. It’s an odd choice for Premier Boxing Champions to select the 5’8″ junior middleweight Hogan for Charlo to defend his WBC 160-lb title against, as the Australian lost his last fight by a 12 round majority decision to WBO junior middleweight champion Jaime Munguia on April 13 in Monterrey, Mexico.

The fight results were controversial, but the World Boxing Organization didn’t order a rematch. Munguia’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions could have negotiated a rematch with the 34-year-old Hogan, but they chose not to.

This fight looks like a mismatch, and it does nothing to increase Charlo’s popularity in the middleweight division. He wants to fight the popular middleweights like Gennady Golovkin and Saul Canelo Alvarez, but the weak match-making that’s being done for Charlo makes it easy for him to be ignored by those guys.

Fans want to see Charlo fight Matt Korobov again

Last December, Charlo won a controversial 12 round decision over Russian southpaw Matt Korobov (28-2-1, 14 KOs) on Showtime at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. A lot of boxing fans saw that as a robbery, considering that Korobov landed the cleaner, harder shots all throughout the fight. Charlo chose not to give Korobov a rematch despite the controversy. The 36-year-old Korbov was brought in as a last minute replacement to fill in for Willie Monroe, who had to pull out of the fight.