Jermall Charlo says he’s finally ready to give up his WBC middleweight title to move up to 168 to challenge WBA/WBC/WBO champ Canelo Alvarez for his titles after watching him force WBO belt-holder Billy Joe Saunders to quit on Saturday.
If Charlo is serious about wanting to take on Canelo, he’ll need to vacate his WBC 160-lb title and move up to 168 to get acclimated.
Canelo has big business in September against IBF super middleweight champion Caleb Plant, so he wouldn’t be available to fight Jermall until December or, more likely, 2022.
Charlo (31-0, 22 KOs) isn’t saying it, but what may have led to him suddenly showing interest in going up to 168 is how beatable and flawed Canelo (56-1-2 38 KOs) looked tonight against a very average Saunders (30-1, 14 KOs).
Saunders didn’t do anything special tonight, and yet he was fighting Canelo to a near standstill through the first seven rounds.
“F*** the money, f*** fame, and f*** the networks,” said Jermall Charlo on social media.
“I’ll lose my [WBC middleweight] title and got to 168 to make the fight [with Canelo] happen now. Boxing needs this fight to happen.”
The British fighter Saunders had to quit on his stool after round eight because he had suffered what appeared to be a bad right eye injury.
Billy Joe found out the hard way that it’s not a good idea to bend forward in front of Canelo in the eighth round.
Canelo took advantage of this mistake by Saunders in landing a right uppercut that landed cleanly on his right eye, resulting in the injury.
For Charlo to be taken seriously by Canelo or the boxing fans, he’s going to need to go up in weight and take the challenge given to him by David Benavidez, who has called him out.
If Charlo can beat former two-time WBC super middleweight champion Benavidez (24-0, 21 KOs), he’d show the fans that he’s for real and not just clout-chasing with Canelo.
Canelo didn’t look at all good tonight, and it’s unknown if this is a sign of age, ring wear or if he overtrained for the fight.
The way Canelo fought, he would have a lot of problems trying to beat Jermall because he throws a lot of punches, and he’s a lot more powerful than Saunders.
Moreover, Jermall isn’t going to make the same simple mistake that Saunders did by leaning over in front of Canelo. That’s not going to happen.
If Canelo wanted to give the boxing world an interesting fight in September, he’d delay his match against Plant and instead take on Charlo. That would be a much bigger fight than in Canelo faces Plant.
