By Keith Idec, photo by Stephanie Trapp
If Jermall Charlo successfully defends his IBF junior middleweight title against Julian Williams on Saturday night, there’s one more fight at 154 pounds that Charlo truly wants.
Unfortunately, Charlo’s trainer doesn’t see a lucrative fight against Canelo Alvarez materializing due to litigation between Alvarez’s promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, and Al Haymon, Charlo’s adviser and the organizer of Premier Boxing Champions.
“I think Canelo is a fight that he really wanted,” Ronnie Shields, Charlo’s trainer, told BoxingScene.com. “But because of the circumstances, you’ve gotta realize we probably won’t ever get that fight. The legal stuff, and plus Canelo is with HBO, not that it really matters. But I just think with the rift between Al Haymon and Golden Boy, I honestly don’t see it being possible.
“And that’s a shame because we’ve always said the best fighters should fight each other, no matter what. Maybe they can make a compromise and say, ‘You know what? We’ll do it.’ Hopefully they’ll see that Jermall is the real deal on Saturday, that he’s a young kid, just as young as Canelo, and they’ll wanna do it. We’ll have to see.”
If Houston’s Charlo (24-0, 18 KOs) defeats Philadelphia’s Williams (22-0-1, 14 KOs, 1 NC) and he doesn’t get a shot at Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 KOs), Shields expects his 26-year-old title-holder to move up from 154 pounds to 160.
“Jermall’s a big guy,” Shields said. “It’s tough [to make weight], but at the same time, he can make it. And that’s all that matters. All that matters is that he can make that weight. Like I said, the only thing that I feel will keep him at 154 pounds is big fights. And if he can’t get a big fight – obviously he can’t fight his [twin] brother [Jermell] and he can’t fight Erislandy Lara [also trained by Shields].
“So he definitely would test the waters at 160, get a fight there, see how he feels there. If he likes it, we’ll stay there. If he doesn’t, we’ll just go back to 154 and hopefully we can get a big fight there. But he’s not sweating it. He just wants to fight the best out there. But again, 154 is really tough [to make]. But if there’s a big fight, where he makes a lot of money and it makes a lot of sense to him, then he would do it. Otherwise, 160, here he comes.”
Charlo’s mandatory defense of the IBF 154-pound championship against Williams will be the second of three fights Showtime will broadcast as part of a “Showtime Championship Boxing” tripleheader Saturday night.
It’s set to begin at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT, when a replay of the bout between IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (17-0, 17 KOs) and challenger Eric Molina (25-3, 19 KOs), taped earlier Saturday in Manchester, England, will air again. Argentina’s Jesus Cuellar (28-1, 21 KOs) will defend his WBA world featherweight title against former two-division champion Abner Mares (29-2-1, 15 KOs), of Downey, California, in the main event.
The Charlo-Williams and Cuellar-Mares matches will take place at USC’s Galen Center in Los Angeles.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
