Curveball: Canelo still to face Charlo, but Jermell not Jermall
Undisputed super middleweight champion will now face undisputed junior middleweight champion in 1st fight of PBC deal
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Undisputed super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez will still defend the title against a Charlo in September, just not the one he was expected to fight.
Instead of squaring off with Jermall Charlo, the WBC middleweight titleholder expected to move up one weight class for the fight, Alvarez instead will defend against twin brother Jermell Charlo, the undisputed junior middleweight champion, who will move up two divisions for the fight.
Alvarez on Friday posted to his social media channels the message “Undisputed vs. Undisputed. Sept. 30 Las Vegas.”
Included with the post was a photo of Alvarez and Jermell Charlo with each of them holding their four sanctioning body championship belts and the Ring magazine title.
The fight will take place at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, sources with knowledge of the plans told Fight Freaks Unite.
The date is two weeks later than Alvarez’s preferred date of Sept. 16, which is Mexican Independence Day. That is one of the weekends the Mexican star typically tries to schedule fights on but that was no go this year because T-Mobile Arena, his preferred venue, was not available as it is hosting a UFC event.
When Alvarez initially posted to social media on June 22 that he had a “done deal” and would return in September (without specifying a date or opponent) he also included the Premier Boxing Champions logo, indicating that he was moving from doing a series of one-off fights with Matchroom Boxing and DAZN to go with PBC, whose broadcast partner is Showtime. Alvarez-Charlo will air on Showtime PPV.
Subsequent reporting by Fight Freaks Unite and other outlets confirmed from sources with knowledge of the deal that Alvarez has signed a three-fight agreement with PBC that included the names of various fighters that PBC founder Al Haymon works with as potential opponents. The plan was for the first fight of the deal to be against Jermall Charlo, despite the fact that the middleweight titleholder has been out of the ring for two years as of June 19 due to injuries and outside the ring issues, including an extremely bitter divorce from his wife and a custody battle over their children he is in the midst of.
Junior middleweight Charlo (35-1-1, 19 KOs), 33, of Houston, has also been inactive with just one fight in each of 2020, 2021 and 2022. But after fighting to a split draw with Brian Castano in a four-belt 154-pound unification fight in July 2021, they met in a rematch in May 2022 and Charlo scored a 10th-round knockout to become the first fighter of the four-belt era to become an undisputed junior middleweight champion.
He was then supposed to defend against WBO mandatory challenger Tim Tszyu in January in a Showtime main event, but Charlo (32-0, 22 KOs) fractured his hand in two places during a sparring session, which forced him to postpone the fight. Australia’s Tszyu instead knocked out former titleholder Tony Harrison in the ninth round for the vacant WBO interim title in March while waiting for Charlo.
When Charlo still was not going to be ready by the expected June timeframe, Tszyu took another fight and knocked out Carlos Ocampo in the first round on June 18. All along, the talk from both sides, and from Showtime, was that Charlo-Tszyu would be next — this fall in the United States.
But in recent days, according to source with knowledge of the situation, Alvarez’s plans changed when the middleweight Charlo let his team know he did not believe he could be properly prepared for Alvarez after such a long layoff and the ongoing divorce, and he stepped aside, which paved the way for his brother got the assignment. According to sources, the terms for the bout remain the same for Alvarez, who is guaranteed “north of $40 million.”
While Alvarez announced the fight on Friday afternoon, the Tszyu camp was informed earlier Friday that Charlo would not be facing Tszyu next and “they took it pretty well,” according to a source with knowledge of how that went down.
With Alvarez now fighting the junior middleweight Charlo, it will mark the first time in the four-belt era that reigning undisputed champions will fight each other, assuming Charlo is not stripped of any of the belts for taking the Alvarez fight when he has multiple mandatory defenses that are overdue.
Four-division champion Alvarez (59-2-2, 39 KOs), 32, who is coming off a one-sided decision over John Ryder on May 6 in a Guadalajara, Mexico homecoming fight, will be making his sixth overall super middleweight title defense and third of the undisputed 168-pound crown.
Other potential PBC opponents for Alvarez during the agreement include the middleweight Charlo, WBC interim super middleweight titlist David Benavidez, WBA “regular” titlist David Morrell, former middleweight and junior middleweight titlist Demetrius Andrade and even three-belt welterweight titleholder Errol Spence Jr., who has a unification fight for the undisputed title against Terence Crawford on July 29 in the year’s most significant fight.
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Photo: Alvarez’s social media
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I knew Charlo would back out of fighting tszyu after he saw his last two fights tszyu would of been a 60 40 chance
Will Benavidez come up with a patented PBC "Mystery Injury" to avoid David Morrell? Spence/Crawford got another subtext. Not likely, but if Errol Spence thrashes Crawford. He's (legitimately) in line before Benavidez for a Canelo fight. BTW, for all of the Canelo haters. Jermell is hardly the first champion to jump multiple weight classes for a Title fight. Most recently Canelo himself (Kovalev) and Bernard Hopkins (Tarver).