By Allan Fox: Jermall Charlo will be defending his title on September 26th against Sergiy Derevyanchenko on Showtime pay-per-view. WBC middleweight champion Charlo (30-0, 22 KOs) was initially concerned about wanting to do a better job beating the two-time 160-lb world title challenger Derevyanchenko (13-2, 10 KOs) than Gennady Golovkin and Daniel Jacobs did, as they both had a difficult time against him.

Jacobs beat Derevyanchenko by a close 12 round split decision in October 2018, whereas GGG (40-1-1, 35 KOs) edged the Ukrainan fighter by a 12 round unanimous decision in 2019.

In both of the contests, Derevyanchenko fought well enough to deserve the victory in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans. That’s why whatever Jermall, 30, does against him, it’s going to be compared to how Jacobs and GGG. Derevyanchenko did better against Golovkin than he did in the Jacobs match, but both of them were very close matches.

Jermall needs a decisive victory

Charlo says he’s not going to worry about trying to outdo Jacobs and Golovkin in beating Derevyanchenko. He just wants to get the victory and go home with his WBC 160lb title at the end of the night.

Jermall and his brother WBC junior middleweight champion Jermell Charlo will be sharing the Showtime PPV doubleheader card on September 26th. This is a Premier Boxing Champions presented card.

The competition for Jermall at 160 has been horrible since he moved up to the weight class in 2017. Jermall’s management at PBC has matched him against mediocre opposition for some reason.

At first wasn’t a big deal, but recently it’s become increasingly more noticible with fans, who view the ‘Big Charlo’ as being spoonfed soft opposition by his management.

Jermall Charlo’s opponents since moving up to 160:

Jorge Sebastian Heiland
Hugo Centeno Jr
Matt Korobov
Brandon Adams
Dennis Hogan

Both Charlo brothers will have a lot of fans paying attneiton to them. Unfortunately for the Charlo brothers, the fans may not bother ordering the card on PPV, but they’ll be checking out the results one way or another.

“He lost both of those fights against Gennadiy Golovkin and Daniel Jacobs.,” Jermall said of Derevyanchenko. “Competitive or not, that’s what happened.

A clear win for Charlo against Derevyanchenko would be a massive plus for his career because it would him his first real win over a quality opponent since his 5th round knockout of Julian ‘J-Rock’ Williams in December 2016. That was a long, long time ago, and Jermalls’s opposition since then have been lackluster.

WBC got in the way of Charlo facing Canelo

You can’t entirely blame Charlo for facing so many middle-of-the road opponents during his 12-year pro career. He wanted to take on Canelo Alvarez when he held the WBC middleweight belt 2019, but the World Boxing Council got in the way of that.

They elevated Alvarez to WBC Franchise middleweight champion, which made it impossible for Charlo to fight him. Since Canelo wasn’t interested in facing Charlo, there was no longer any way for him to force the fight.

“This is going to be a real fight, just know that. I’m going to be super sharp. That’s the message I want to deliver to all of the other middleweights out there,” said Charlo on his title defense against Derevyanchenko.

“I thought I might need to out-perform Jacobs and Golovkin, but as long as I continue to be myself, I will get the victory and I’ll have my hand raised.”

Once Charlo moved up in weight from 154 to 160, he ran out of opposition to fight. The guys that he wanted to fight, Canelo and Golovkin, compete on other networks. That left Charlo with no one to fight.

More opposition at 168

He could move up to 168 and expand his horizons to get fights against the talented opposition in that division, but that would be risky.

Charlo might lose to the likes of David Benavidez, Caleb Plant, Callum Smith, Billy Joe Saunders and Canelo. As it is, Charlo barely beat Matt Korobov in their fight in December 2018. A lot of boxing fans still believe Charlo was given a gift decision over Korobov based on him being the A-side.

So if Jermall moved up to 168, he would get bigger fights, but he might lose repeatedly and his career would sink rapidly. Jermall is an excellent fighter, but he’s got a lot of flaws just like his brother Jermall, who was recently beaten by Tony Harrison.