By Dan Ambrose: Junior middleweight champions Jermell Charlo and Brian Castano are expected to meet in a rematch in early 2022 in February in Houston, Texas.
This fight is designed to clear up the controversy sounding the previous Charlo vs. Castano fight last July at the AT&T Center in San Antonio, Texas, which was ruled a 12 round draw.
Many boxing fans felt that WBO 154-lb champion Castano (17-0-2, 12 KOs) did enough to be given the victory, but he was fighting in Jermell’s home state of Texas.
The judges scored the Charlo (34-1-1, 18 KOs) vs. Castano fight as follows:
- 114-114
- 117-111 Charlo – Wow!
- 114-113 Castano
The judge that scored it 117-111 for Charlo, Nelson Vazquez, was heavily criticized by the boxing world, as they felt that he not only got it wrong by picking the wrong winner, but his lopsided score didn’t reflect in any way what took place inside the ring that night.
The heavily battered & bruised Charlo looked like a beaten army, outgunned and outmanned the entire 12 round contest.
For the most part, Jermell shelled up on the ropes and was bombarded by heavy shots for 12 rounds by Castano.
It was like watching an army shell an opposing force that was holed up in their foxholes, having run out of ammunition and being forced to wait for resupplies from the rear.
According to Lance Pugmire @PugBoxing, the WBO will sanction the Charlo vs. Castano rematch by late next week.
In the meantime, WBO mandatory Tim Tszyu will have to sit and quietly wait for the smoke to clear for the Charlo-Castano 2 rematch before getting his mandated title shot against Castano.
Rather than the fight being staged in a neutral venue, the rematch will take place in Houston, Texas, thus giving Jermell a possible advantage over the Argenitiniaan Castano.
Hopefully, there’s no controversy over the outcome of the Charlo vs. Castano fight because it’s a waste of time for them and the boxing public to have another questionable decision.
If there will be strange scoring repeatedly for Charlo-Castano fights, they need to take it to a part of the U.S where it will be considered neutral territory. Given the outcome of the previous Jermell vs. Castano fight, it’s surprising that the rematch would return to Texas.
Of course, we saw Canelo Alvarez return to the same venue in Las Vegas at the T-Mobile Arena after his controversial draw against Gennadiy Golovkin in September 2017.
Canelo then won a VERY debatable 12 round majority decision over GGG in the rematch at the T-Mobile in Las Vegas. If Canelo could get away with returning to the same venue, Jermell can do it too.
