Jermell Charlo, the undisputed junior middleweight champion and … intrepid union organizer?
The Houston, Texas native, who holds the IBF, WBC, WBO, and WBA 154-pound titles, is one of the better paid and successful fighters in boxing but that did not stop him from mentioning, in a recent interview, his desire to see the sport unionized, in the hopes that a broader coalition of fighters could benefit from, say, a pension plan and other provisions and protections that currently do not exist in the “The Sweet Science” but exist in others. Unlike most professional sports, boxing is fragmented, with no central governing body or fighters’ association.
Charlo, 33, also mentioned his dissatisfaction with the fees made out to boxing’s four sanctioning bodies, which gives the fighters the rights to compete for their belts in the first place. (Errol Spence Jr., the unified welterweight champion and Charlo's training mate, also spoke out against the sanctioning bodies recently.)
“I wish we could create a union in this boxing,” Charlo told former NBA forward Stephen Jackson in a recent episode of Fight Towns on Showtime Sports. “I wish it could be our era that could do it. Like you fight under these sanctioning bodies—you pay them 3% every time you fight. Me, I got four of them because I have all the belts. I got to pay 3% to each one of them, 12% just to box. That doesn’t go back to me. Just to fight.
“I wish there was a union in this thing. I wish I could put together a system that could make everybody sign up under a league, but then it’s like I gotta have a big, I gotta have some fuckin’ investors or something. Ain’t no way I’m gonna be like let me take a fight check and [spend my own money on a union]. But, sh!t, if [Floyd] Mayweather really wanted to, I’d sit down with Mayweather. Mayweather’s got some bread, some investors, and all of that big honchos.”
Charlo then expressed pessimism about making a union.
“But I don’t think they can ever make a union in this thing, dawg,” he said.
Charlo, who is recovering from a broken hand, has not fought since stopping Brian Castano one year ago, in May. He is projected to defend his titles later this year against Australia’s Tim Tszyu.
Sean Nam is the author of Murder on Federal Street: Tyrone Everett, the Black Mafia, and the Last Golden Age of Philadelphia Boxing.
