SAN ANTONIO – Brian Castano senses some overconfidence in Jermell Charlo.
The IBF/WBA/WBC 154-pound champion compliments Castano when he is asked about his upcoming opponent. Castano considers Charlo’s praise primarily lip service, however, as they move toward their 12-round title unification fight Saturday night at AT&T Center in San Antonio.
The unbeaten Argentinean champion suspects Charlo looks at him like a short, one-dimensional fighter who is beyond beatable.
“Charlo is one of the best fighters in the 154-pound division,” Castano told BoxingScene.com. “There’s no doubt about that. However, having said that, I do think that he underestimates me because I’m small, that I’m short. But he’s gonna see what I am able to do when we step into the ring and he’s gonna realize how he shouldn’t underestimate me at all.”
Castano’s persistent pressure was an important factor during his 12-round, unanimous-decision victory over Patrick Teixeira in his last fight. The 31-year-old Castano cautioned that the bullish approach he employed while beating Brazil’s Teixeira in their fight for Teixeira’s WBO junior middleweight title isn’t the only tactic that he can utilize versus Charlo.
“I do think he thinks I’m one-dimensional,” Castano said. “He’s basing his thought process on my fight against Teixeira and the way that I’ve fought lately, which was going forward and attacking constantly. But I’ll do what I have to do during that fight. If I have to go forward and put pressure on him, I will. If I have to counter-attack, I will. If I have to be a more finesse kind of boxer, I will do that, too. So, he’s gonna come to be surprised if he thinks that I’m just a one-trick pony.”
Unless their fight results in a draw, the Castano-Charlo winner will emerge as boxing’s first fully unified 154-pound champion and just the sixth such champion in any division during the sport’s four-belt era. Handicappers have established Houston’s Charlo (34-1, 18 KOs) as more than a 2-1 favorite to conquer Castano (17-0-1, 12 KOs) in their Showtime Championship Boxing main event (9 p.m. ET; 6 p.m. PT).
Las Vegas’ Rolando Romero (13-0, 11 KOs) will defend his WBA interim lightweight title against Sweden’s Anthony Yigit (24-1-1, 8 KOs) in the 12-round co-feature of Showtime’s three-bout broadcast. The telecast is set to open with a 10-round middleweight match in which Uruguay’s Amilcar Vidal (12-0, 11 KOs) will square off against Immanuwel Aleem (18-2-2, 11 KOs), of Richmond, Virginia.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
