By Chris Williams: An angry Jermall Charlo came out of his lion’s den on Wednesday, saying he’s ready to annihilate David Benavidez in his next fight. Charlo (31-0, 22 KOs) is promising that he’s going to put a hurting on the trash-talking, weight-challenged former WBC-lb champion Benavidez (24-0, 21 KOs).
This is the Charlo that fans have wanted to see because Benavidez has been getting away with too much lip lately. The message that Charlo gave Benavidez today is his days are numbers, and he’s ready to take his #1 spot to force Canelo Alvarez to face him.
With a knockout win over Benavidez, 24, Charlo will be in the driver’s seat to take on Canelo in December if he gets that far. Alvarez (55-1-2, 37 KOs) still needs to win his unification fights against Billy Joe Saunders and Caleb Plant to meet up with Jermall in December.
Benavidez had better think long before he takes this fight with Charlo because he’s clearly not ready for this type of fighter. If Benavidez takes the fight, he could be sorry for it later.
Not only will Benavidez lose out on his possible future fight against Canelo Alvarez in 2022, but he’ll also miss out on fights against Plant and Saunders as well.
Those guys aren’t going to want anything to do with Benavidez after Charlo knocks him out.
Charlo ready to face Benaviez
“Yeah, let’s make that fight happen. I’m going to knock his punk a** out,” said Jermall Charlo to The Last Stand Podcast. “I promise that. I put that on everything I love.
“I give him about four rounds, five rounds. I knock him out about five rounds, six rounds, no more. He get hit too much. I’m powerful.
“I’ll explode on him, trust me. I do my thing, I’ve been doing this all my life. Put me in there with the bro. I’m a lion, bro. Let’s get it,” said an angry-sounding Jermall in sending a message to Benavidez.
So there it is folks. Charlo is ready to take on the stork-like Benavidez and send him down to his first career defeat.
Benavidez will need a new trainer in a hurry if he plans on accepting the fight with Charlo because we saw from him last Saturday against Ronald Ellis, he’s not nearly ready.
Ellis (18-2-2, 12 KOs) was putting hands on Benavidez the entire fight and had him looking like the loser in terms of facial damage at the end. As Charlo says, Benavidez is too easy to hit, and he’s been that way his entire career.
Benavidez stands straight up when he fights and does move his upper body or block shots. He just walks in straight up and down, throwing a lot of punches. He’s gotten away wight fighting like that because his opposition has been so poor.
With that said, you can argue that Benavidez deserved a loss in his first fight against Ronald Gavril in September 2017. That was a fight in which Benavidez was given a controversial 12 round split decision, but many boxing fans had Gavril winning.
Jermall has a lot to gain
A win over Benavidez will be the key to the kingdom for Jermall Charlo to finally force Canelo out of the brush to face him finally.
It’s common knowledge at this point that Canelo has been avoiding Jermall like the plague for the last five years. Unfortunately, there’s been nothing Charlo could do about it.
When Jermall finally got in a position to force Canelo to fight him in 2019 as his WBC mandatory, the World Boxing Council turned around and made Alvarez the Franchise champion.
Rather than doing the right thing and fighting Charlo, Canelo accepted the Franchise title and took easy fights against a shot Danny Jacobs, Sergey Kovalev, and the over-hyped Callum Smith.
If Charlo beats Benavidez, he’ll be the last man standing for Canelo to fight at 168 that the public wants to see. Canelo fights anyone else other than Charlo, he’ll look like a ducker.