On April 21 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, former IBF junior middleweight champion Jermall Charo will attempt to move a step closer to a mandatory world title shot when he faces Hugo Centeno for the vacant WBC interim-middleweight title.
In the main event that night, four division champion Adrien Broner will battle former welterweight world champion Jessie Vargas in a twelve round bout, which takes place at a catch-weight of 144-pounds.
Charlo vs. Centeno was originally scheduled for March 3 before being rescheduled due to a rib injury suffered by Centeno.
Charlo (26-0, 20 KOs) won his super welterweight title with a dominant knockout of Cornelius Bundrage in 2015. In his debut at 160-pounds, the 27-year-old scored a TKO victory over Jorge Sebastian Heiland at Barclays Center on July 29.
The undefeated former champ is not bothered by the delayed date.
"Since my last fight I’ve had a chance to work on my patience and work on improvements to my game. Before the injury to Centeno, I was having the best camp of my life. I’ve got the same feeling that I had before I won my first world title," Charlo said.
"I want to be a champion at 160 more than I did the first time at 154. Centeno is a tough fighter. He’ll be a hard test but he’s someone who isn’t at my level. I’m not taking anything away from him. But he’s just another fighter that’s in my way."
The 26-year-old Centeno (26-1, 14 KOs) caught everyone’s attention when he scored a stunning knockout of Immanuwel Aleem in his last fight on Aug. 25.
The victory helped Centeno to successfully rebound from a tough TKO loss to Maiej Sulecki on June 18, 2016. Centeno expects to be 100 percent healed and ready for the challenge by fight night.
Should Charlo win, he would be in line to face the winner of the upcoming rematch between Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez, who battle for the WBC, WBA, IBF, IBO world titles on May 5th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
