Jermall Charlo targeting Golovkin, wants to unify 160-lb division

By Boxing News - 03/23/2021 - Comments

By Sean Jones: Jermall Charlo says he’s working on setting up a fight against Gennadiy Golovkin, and he plans on unifying the 160-lb division before he moves up to 168 to take on the top guys in that weight class.

WBC middleweight champion Charlo (31-0, 22 KOs) won’t be going up to the 168-lb division to battle David Benavidez like he recently said he would.

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It’s unknown what made the 31-year-old Jermall change his mind about going up to super middleweight, but it could be like his trainer Ronnie Shields says, that Benavidez brings nothing to the table in terms of a world title.

Charlo will invest a lot of time unifying the 160-lb division

Staying at 160 to unify the division could prove difficult, if not impossible, for Charlo. It’s not that he’s not capable of unifying the division, as he might be the #1 guy in that weight class.

The problem is how will PremierBoxing Champions arrange fights with IBF champ Golovkin (41-1-1, 36 KOs), WBA champ Ryota Murata and WBO champion Demetrius Andrade.

It’ll be hard enough for PBC to set up one unification fight against those three world champions at 160, let alone all three.

“I’m trying to lock in this Triple G fight; I’m letting you know first. That’s kind of what I’ve been working on. At least that will give me a little more stepping power to say I can fight Canelo,” said Jermall Charlo to Brian Custer’s Last Stand Podcast.

Image: Jermall Charlo targeting Golovkin, wants to unify 160-lb division

Would the soon-to-be 39-year-old Golovkin agree to fight Charlo? That’s anyone’s guess right now, as GGG has never outwardly said that he was interested in fighting Charlo, as far as I can tell.

Golovkin won’t be fighting Jaime Munguia next; we know that. Munguia is in negotiations to fight Maciej Sulecki next month on April 23/24 on DAZN. With that fight not happening, GGG needs to face someone for his next time out on DAZN.

The streaming giant let Golovkin take an easy no-name fight against Kamil Szeremeta last December, which likely didn’t bring in many subscribers.

That was an Avni Yildirim-level opponent that Golovkin fought, and you’ve got to believe the streaming giant will want quality this time around. Charlo would fit that description for sure, but it remains to be seen whether the fight can get made.

With Jermall’s recent flip-flop about changing his mind about going up to 168 to take on Benavidez, it’s hard to believe what he says when he talks about working on a fight against Golovkin.

It sounds like a nice pipe dream for Jermall, but you can’t fault him for at least having a vision for what direction he wants to take his career.

You can say this: It’s a lot safer for Charlo to stay at 160, spinning his wheels on the unknown challengers he’s been defending his WBC 160lb strap against than it would if he were to go up to 168 to fight Benavidez, Canelo Alvarez, and Edgar Berlanga.

“I want to unify as my brother did,” said Charlo. “At 160, at least let me unify, let me capture the division, there’s somebody when can unify, we can fight. It doesn’t matter who got the belt. Maybe like two to three more fights.”

Instead of trying to follow what his brother Jermell did, Jermall should be going after a fight that will open the door to a mega-clash against Canelo Alvarez.

It’s commonsense that Charlo needs to be fighting in the same division as Canelo at 168 for him to force a fight against him. Additionally, Charlo needs a quality win on his resume because he hadn’t fought a world-level fighter since 2016 when he took on Julian ‘J-Rock’ Williams. Since then, Jermall has been taking easy fights against these guys:

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

The only good fighter out of that bunch was Derevyanchenko, but he was coming off a grueling war against Golovkin. Sergiy clearly wasn’t the same guy that he was before he ran into GGG in 2019.