Jermall Charlo: Where'd Canelo Go? How Can He Skip Me Like That?
HOUSTON – Jermall Charlo had just finished a weight-cutting session Wednesday when his phone rang.
It was his trainer, Ronnie Shields, who had some interesting news to relay to the WBC’s interim middleweight champion. Before Shields could tell Charlo about the WBC’s bizarre announcement, Charlo clicked over to answer Al Haymon’s call.
Haymon called Charlo to tell him the same thing, that the WBC had elevated him from interim to world middleweight champion because the Mexico City-based sanctioning organization designated Canelo Alvarez as its first franchise champion.
Removing the interim tag from his status sounded good, but a somewhat confused Charlo understandably had questions. First and foremost, Charlo wanted to know how Alvarez was allowed to technically remain a WBC middleweight champion without having to make a seemingly overdue mandatory defense against him.
It was a valid concern coming from a fighter who was an interim champion for 14 months.
“I was just like, ‘Where Canelo go? If I’ve been elevated to the regular champion, where is Canelo? How can he just skip me and just leave the belt alone like that?’ ” Charlo asked after a press conference Thursday at NRG Stadium. “Well, Canelo has the bigger belt. Well, that’s the belt I want now. So, eventually when the time comes and what he’s done for the sport, I’ll continue to do what I’m doing and hopefully I’ll become a franchise champion, too.”
Charlo calmly discussed the WBC’s dubious decision Thursday, but elevating Alvarez to “franchise champion” essentially ended any chance Charlo might’ve had at proving himself against Alvarez in the foreseeable future. The financial impact eliminating Alvarez as a potential opponent has on him isn’t lost on the 29-year-old Charlo, either, but he has tried to remain positive.
“No matter how hard it is to get the fights that I want,” Charlo said, “I’ll get ‘em sooner or later and it’s gonna make it all even better.”
There were obvious obstacles to making an Alvarez-Charlo bout before the WBC announced its dumbfounding designation – most notably Charlo’s affiliation with Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions, Showtime and FOX and Alvarez’s long-term partnership with DAZN. Then again, Charlo could’ve accepted one of British promoter Eddie Hearn’s offers and immediately had a much better chance of facing Alvarez on DAZN, with which the Mexican superstar has a five-year, 11-fight deal that could become worth $365 million.
Alvarez, meanwhile, has a list of options that includes a lucrative third fight against Gennadiy Golovkin, a middleweight title unification fight against the winner of the Demetrius Andrade-Maciej Sulecki WBO championship match Saturday night and a return to the super middleweight division to battle WBA champ Callum Smith.
Even though Alvarez no longer is obligated to make a WBC title defense against him, Charlo still hopes he has a realistic place on Alvarez’s list.
“I would love to fight Canelo,” Charlo said. “Everyone in the world know that I would love to fight Canelo. I’m not dodging any fighters. I’m fighting all of my mandatories. It’s a trophy. It’s a belt that sets up other fights in the future. But we’re fighters, man. We’re here to fight. That’s what we’re here to do while we have that window of opportunity to do it. I wanna become one of the best fighters out there. And the only way I can do it is to fight the best out there.”
Charlo (28-0, 21 KOs) is scheduled to defend his middleweight title against huge underdog Brandon Adams (21-2, 13 KOs) on Saturday night. Their “Showtime Championship Boxing” main event will be broadcast from NRG Arena in Houston, Charlo’s hometown.
His critics have chastised Charlo for fighting Adams, who won the fifth season of “The Contender” reality series seven months ago. Since moving up from junior middleweight two years ago, Charlo’s list of 160-pound opponents includes Jorge Heiland, Hugo Centeno Jr., Matt Korobov and Adams.
Those aren’t the types of challenges Charlo needs to pursue if he is to establish the “legacy” he mentioned again Thursday. Now that the WBC has reclassified Charlo as its middleweight champion, however, he hopes it entices top opponents other than Alvarez to fight him.
“I think it should make the fights easier [to make], with me being the champion now,” Charlo said. “Because now the guys will wanna come out and get this belt. And we won’t have successful stories like I’m fittin’ to fight right now, like a Brandon Adams. And I know the fans think that I chose this, but I didn’t. I look high [on] Brandon Adams. I think he’s a talented fighter. He has a lot of attributes that fighters I’ve fought in the past didn’t have. So, I’m not taking him lightly or anything. But it is what it is. I have to be patient, be calm and get my job done.”
Assuming Charlo can do that against a someone who’ll face the best opponent of his career, Charlo figures that should at least enable him to fight the Andrade-Sulecki winner later this year.
“I wanna become the unified, undisputed champion at middleweight,” Charlo said. “I wanna do things that Roy Jones done and that Bernard Hopkins done, and the best middleweights out there in the world have done. I definitely wanna make those my goals.”
Andrade also is contractually committed to having his fights streamed by DAZN, yet Charlo doesn’t think that should prevent them from fighting if Alvarez remains unavailable.
“You cannot hide behind a weight division or a network or any title or any of that,” Charlo said. “Because boxing is boxing. The best should fight the best, and that’s what I’m here to do.”
If Charlo can’t secure fights against other elite middleweights, he’ll adhere to whichever WBC obligations he’ll have as its middleweight champion.
“I don’t even know who my mandatory contender is,” Charlo said. “But I won’t do what Canelo did. I will fight my mandatories. You know, my manager, Al Haymon, schedules all of my fights and put me in the best positions to better my life and my career. So, you don’t have to worry about Jermall Charlo holding on to the belt at any time. I’ll be fighting again by the end of the year.”
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