By Sean Jones: Canelo Alvarez is in a no-win position tonight where he won’t receive credit from boxing fans for his latest cherry pick, Jermell Charlo because he’s fighting a guy that is moving up two weight divisions from 154.
(Photo credit: Esther Lin/SHOWTIME)
Undisputed super middleweight Canelo is using this fight against Jermell as a foxhole to hide from his main threats at 168, David Benavidez & David Morrell Jr.
If Canelo wants to be praised by fans, he’s got to stop running from Benavidez & Morrell and get it over with. Sure, they’ll beat the brakes off Canelo, but at least he’d show courage by facing them instead of combing the weight classes below him for easy marks.
Given that Jermell Charlo is a 154-pounder and a guy who has never fought anyone you can call an A-level fighter during his 15-year career, Canelo won’t receive 100% credit from fans for beating him tonight.
Opposition Canelo should be fighting
- David Benavidez
- Dmitry Bivol
- Artur Beterbiev
- David Morrell Jr.
Any fighter that cherry-picks an opponent from two divisions below, as Canelo is doing with Jermell, won’t receive full 100% credit for the victory from fans.
For example, if welterweight Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis were to select a fighter from two weight divisions below him at lightweight, like Gervonta Davis, he wouldn’t receive credit for beating him.
Canelo must destroy Jermell tonight
“The more I have studied these guys with video breakdowns of past fights, the more excited I’ve gotten. I think a lot of the things that Jermell does are things that trouble Canelo,” said Chris Algieri to the Fight Hub TV forum about tonight’s Canelo-Charlo main event on Showtime PPV.
“I think Charlo is going to be successful on the outside; using that lead had to keep Canelo busy. Canelo has trouble with guys with good lead hands; think GGG, both fights, but not the third. I don’t count the third as a fight. That was a sparring session,” said Algieri.
The 33-year-old Jermell Charlo is just another one of many examples of a manufactured fighter, a guy fed tomato cans his entire 15-year career to make him look good. Unfortunately, there are so many fighters just like him who have been made to look good, thanks to the skillful match-making by their handlers.
Jermell changed his previous boxer style of fighting in 2015, focusing on going for the knockouts, and he’s been successful with that transition. However, it helped that his opposition has been largely badly flawed, vulnerable guys like Brian Castano, Tony Harrison, Jeison Rosario, and Erickson Lubin.
Charlo hasn’t fought the killers at 154
Jermell hasn’t fought anyone good in the last eight years since becoming a puncher, and it’s likely that if he’d taken on guys like Jesus Ramos, Tim Tszyu, or Brian Mendoza, he would have been knocked out fighting like that.
We would have seen Jermell return to being the cautious safety first fighter he’d been when he was struggling to beat guys like Vanes Martirosyan, Gabriel Rosado & Demetrius Hopkins.
“The two fights to really study are the two GGG fights based on his jab and his lead hand, keeping Canelo busy with the lead hand but also Bivol,” said Algieri. “With the Bivol fight, it’s more of the not over-committing when you do have success. Charlo does that. He’s got blood lust.”
Bivol did a lot more than just jab against Canelo, as many of the punches he threw were power shots thrown in combination form. He threw over 700 shots against Canelo in their fight last year, and a good percentage of those were power shots. It wasn’t because of Bivol’sjab that Canelo lost that fight.
He beat Canelo with his combination punching, sound defense, and fast pace. Jabbing played just a small part in Bivol’s victory.
Why hasn’t Jermell fought the best?
“In the last couple of years, he [Jermell became a puncher, he became a knockout artist,” said Algeri. “He wasn’t in the beginning. He was a boxer, and then he became a boxer-puncher finisher.”
You can’t call Jermell a knockout artist in the true sense because his opposition has been lackluster, and not the A-level guys like Jesus Ramos, Tszyu & Mendoza. The fodder that Jermell has been facing has made it easy for him to look better than he actually is because he’s been fed a lot of soft jobs.
Jermell’s last 10 opponents:
Brian Castano
Jeison Rosario
Tony Harrison
Jorge Cota
Erickson Lubin
Austin Trout
Charles Hatley
Joachim Alcine
John Jackson
Vanes Martirosyan
You couldn’t put those guys in with Tszyu, Ramos, or Mendoza and expect any of them to go 12 rounds. They would literally be food for those guys, which shows you the kind of position that Jermell has been fed by his management.
“A lot of that’s his mentality because, listen, he could always punch. He’d always hurt guys, but he would box smartly after that and didn’t get hit as much,” said Algieri.”Now, though, he hurts you, and he comes in to finish [them], sometimes throwing away his defense, getting hit with some shots.
“We’ve seen that in the last couple of fights, but he’s looking to finish guys up. I think he needs to holster that against Canelo because Canelo’s such a good counter-puncher, and he’s got one of the best chins in the game. You’re not hurting Canelo. You’re coming up two weight classes, and you got a guy with a chin of granite,” said Algieri.
