By Keith Idec

NEW YORK – Ronnie Shields has seen a fresher, stronger Jermall Charlo during this recently completed training camp.

That’s what Charlo’s trainer anticipated because Charlo didn’t have to spend so much of his preparation time trying to get down to the 154-pound limit for his upcoming fight. The 6-feet Charlo had out-grown the junior middleweight division, and although advancing to middleweight cost the undefeated fighter a world title, Shields knew this move to middleweight was no longer avoidable.

Shields says the benefits will become obvious to everyone else starting Saturday night. That’s when Houston’s Charlo (25-0, 19 KOs) will go up against Argentina’s Sebastian Heiland (29-4-2, 16 KOs) in a WBC middleweight elimination match at Barclays Center in Brooklyn (Showtime; 9 p.m. ET/PT).

“He’s gonna be at least 60 percent better than he was at 154,” Shields told BoxingScene.com recently. “He’s gonna give a lot of middleweights hell. It’s so funny that since he has moved up, everybody is calling him out. I just tell him, ‘Look, one at a time. You can only fight one guy at a time.’

“Our focus is Heiland. We’ve gotta beat Heiland before we can look at anybody else. So after we beat Heiland, then we’ll talk about the next guy.”

The “next guy” for the 27-year-old Charlo could be the winner of the September 16 showdown between IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs) and former WBC champion Canelo Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KOs). If Charlo beats Heiland, he’d become the WBC’s mandatory challenger at 160 pounds and would be guaranteed a title shot at the Golovkin-Alvarez winner.

“That’s a great fight,” Shields said. “We wanna fight every middleweight that’s at the top. But again, we’ve gotta beat Heiland first. So that’s where our concentration is at. We can’t talk about nobody else until we get by Heiland.”

Charlo floored Philadelphia’s Julian Williams (23-1-1, 15 KOs, 1 NC) three times on his way to a fifth-round knockout in his last fight. As impressive as Charlo was that night, Shields realized that December 10 defense of his IBF junior middleweight championship would mark Charlo’s last fight at 154 pounds.

“I think the move to 160 is something we had to do,” Shields said. “I don’t like to see a guy give up his title unless it’s necessary, but he just couldn’t make the wait no more. At 160, he’s so comfortable, man. Those six pounds really make a big difference.

“He’s already down in weight now. I’m begging him to eat to gain about 10 more pounds because I want him to be comfortable. I want him to struggle the last couple days to make the weight. But it’s just coming off so easy right now. One-sixty is where he belongs.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.