By Craig Daly: WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman says he approves of Jermall Charlo’s idea of facing Demetrius Andrade next without a tune-up in his first fight back from a two-year layoff.
If the Charlo-Andrade fight doesn’t take place, Sulaiman would like for Jermall (32-0, 22 KOs) to take 10-round tune-up and then defend against either WBC interim 160-lb champion Carlos Adames or #1 ranked contender Jaime Munguia.
Sulaiman has heard the complaints from Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya about wanting his fighter Munguia (41-0, 33 KOs) to get a chance to fight for the WBC middleweight title, and he has no issues with that.
However, what De La Hoya wants is for Jermall to be stripped of his WBC title and the belt made available for Munguia and Sergiy ‘The Technician’ Derevyanchenko to fight for next month in their headliner on June 10th at the Toyota Arena in Ontario, California.
That’s not happening, though, because Sulaiman says he “supports” Jermall, who has been battling with injury & mental health problems during his two years out of the ring.
It’s understandable why Charlo is willing to face the 35-year-old Andrade (32-0, 19 KOs) without a tune-up, given that he looked like he slipped a notch or two in his last performance against Demond Nicholson on January 7th.
Although Andrade won the fight by a one-sided ten round unanimous decision, Nicholson hit him a lot, and he appeared to be dropped in the fifth round.
The combination of inactivity and fighting exclusively weak opposition during his professional career caused Andrade’s skills to erode badly.
Even a rusty Charlo likely will have too much fire power for the shell of what’s left of Andrade at this late stage of his career.
Andrade hasn’t fought a tough opponent since his match against Vanes Martirosyan in 2013, and he barely squeaked by with a ten round split decision win in that fight.
Since that fight, Andrade has been padding his record for the last decade, beating easy marks like Brian Rose, Luke Keeler, Miciej Sulecki, Liam Williams, and Jason Quigley, just a few of the soft jobs.
“We want him to fight, to defend his title,” WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman said Izquierdazo about middleweight champion Jermall Charlo, who hasn’t defended his title since July 2021.
“Yes, without a doubt, Andrade has demonstrated that he is a great fighter,” said Sulaiman about Charlo expressing interest in defending his WBC title against former two-division world champion Demetrius ‘Boo Boo’ Andrade next without taking a tune-up.
“We want him to come back or a 10-round fight. We will support him. And then we hope that a fight can be made with [interim WBC middleweight champion Carlos] Adames to unify the title, or a fight with Munguia would be amazing. We would approve it, without a doubt.
“If they want the fight, I will keep doing everything that is possible for it to happen,” Sulaiman said about Jermall and Jaime Munguia.
