By Kenneth Friedman: WBC middleweight champion Jermall Charlo (31-0, 22 KOs) defeated challenger Sergiy Derevyanchenko (13-3, 10 KOs) by a set of unusually wide scores in winning a 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night in their fight on Showtime PPV at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut.

Both of Derevyanchenko’s eyes were cut up and badly bruised from the shots that he absorbed from Charlo. Like in all of his fights, Derevyanchenko started slowly in the first half of the contest, and then came on strong in the second part of the competition. The judges didn’t give Derevyanchenko much credit for his second-half surge, though, and that’s reflected by the comprehensive scores they turned in for the fight.

Despite the fight appearing to an even match with neither guy getting the better of the action, the judges gave it to Charlo, 30, by the following lopsided scores:

116-112
117-111
118-110

The last score of 118-110 means the judge saw Charlo winning ten rounds to 2, which would seem to be impossible given that Derevyanchenko appeared to win six to seven rounds. Boxing News 24 had the fight scored as a draw at 114-114. The judge that scored it 118-110 for Charlo meant that Derevyanchenko had no shot at winning the battle with him, as he was ignoring the work that he was doing.

Derevyanchenko looked like the better fighter, but you have to give the A-side guy Charlo an extra round. It looked like the judges went a tad bit overboard for the house fighter Charlo in scoring it extremely wide, which is disappointing because that hurts the sport of boxing when you see scores like these for a fight was razor close.

Charlo started well in the first three rounds, fighting on the outside, snapping his jab out, and landing right hands. Derevyanchenko came on beginning in the fourth and was able to rough up Charlo on the inside. From rounds 4 through 12, Derevyanchenko landed many body shots, and he got the better of the action on the inside.

It was a good enough fight to warrant a rematch, but it’s not likely that Charlo will bother fighting Derevyanchenko again. Charlo will move on and face someone else, but it probably won’t be Canelo Alvarez or Gennady Golovkin because those guys fight on a different network platform on DAZN. Someone like Chris Eubank Jr could be next for Jermall, as he’s showing a lot of interest in fighting him.

Charlo was supposed to be making a statement with this fight, but instead, he struggled, gassed out late, and got outworked by the 34-year-old Derevyanchenko. The 38-year-old Gennady Golovkin did a better job against Derevyanchenko in beating him last October than the younger fighter 30-year-old Charlo did tonight.

Premier Boxing Champions and SHOWTIME are going to need to pump the brakes a little with them christening Charlo the next superstar in the middleweight division. What we saw here tonight was not the next star.

In fact, it was a disappointing performance by Charlo, who failed to set himself apart from Derevyanchenko in terms of talent. This was supposed to have been Charlo’s coming out part, but he failed to do show the ability to beat Sergiy by a convincing decision.

One possible reason for Charlo looking so bad is the weight loss. He looked like a light heavyweight in the week before the fight, and he took a lot of water weight to get down to the 160lb limit for the weigh-in last Friday.

Tonight, Charlo looked huge, like a big super-middleweight inside the ring with the much smaller Derevyanchenko, who looked the same size as he was for the weigh-in. Taking all that weight off to get down to 160, and then putting it back on overnight might have been the reason why Charlo gassed out in the last six rounds.

Jermall appeared to lose four out of the last six rounds due to fatigue, and he should have lost two out of the first six rounds, but obviously not with the judges that worked the fight.

Brandon Figueroa stops Damien Vasquez

In other fights on the card, WBA super bantamweight champion Brandon Figueroa (21-0-1, 16 KOs) scored a 10th round knockout over the over-matched Damien Vasquez (15-2-1, 8 KOs). Figueroa wore Vazquez down with his power shots and stopped him in the 10th. The fight should have been halted a lot earlier Vazquez was getting beaten up badly by Figueroa by the sixth round, and it was no longer competitive.