Jermall Charlo says he’d use Benavidez as stepping stone to get Canelo fight

By Boxing News - 06/09/2022 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: Jermall Charlo says he’d be willing to fight unbeaten David Benavidez and use him as a “stepping stone” to get to Canelo Alvarez if that’s what they wanted for the fight to happen.

Considering how less than eager Charlo (32-0, 22 KOs) has seemed in the past about fighting Benavidez (26-0, 23 KOs), it’s hard to imagine a situation where he would agree to take a fight against him if Canelo set that up as a condition for a lucrative battle.

Jermall seems to be confident that he’s going to eventually get the fight with Canelo without him needing to stick his neck out by fighting a quality 160 or 168-pound.

If Jermall truly believes that Benavidez would be a stepping stone, he should take the fight because if he beats the former two-time WBC super-middleweight champion, it would open the door for a fight against Canelo.

I’d still fight [David Benavidez’s] a** and use him as a stepping stone to get to Canelo if that’s what they want me to do, but they’re not setting that up,” said Jermall Charlo to Fighthype.

If Canelo does insist on Jermall and Benavidez fighting each other, it’ll be interesting to see if the Charlo twin aggrees to the contest.

Jermall has been making good money making voluntary defenses for his WBC middleweight title on Showtime without the network insisting that he fight better opposition.

Unfortunately, Charlo hasn’t taken a risky fight since his 2016 match-up against a prime Julian ‘J-Rock’ Williams. That was the last time that Jermall took on a solid A-level fighter.

In Jermall’s fights in the last six years, the best fighter he’s fought is arguably Sergiy Derevyanchenko and Matt Korobov. Both of those guys had a lot of mileage on them and were no longer in the prime of their careers.

“He’s not professional enough. He hasn’t learned how to get a fighter to open himself up for the great jab that he’s got, and the power,” said Shawn Porter on the Porter Way Podcast about WBA ‘regular’ super middleweight champion David Morrell Jr not being ready for Benavidez.”

David Morrell Jr would be a good fight for Benavidez if Charlo doesn’t want the fight. However, the 24-year-old Morrell (7-0, 6 KOs) doesn’t have the experience to be fighting a guy like Benavidez and doesn’t throw combinations. For Morrell to have a chance against Benavidez, he would need to throw combinations because his single shots wouldn’t do the job

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