By Keith Idec
HOUSTON – The WBC can call Canelo Alvarez whatever it wants.
The way Ronnie Shields sees it, elevating Alvarez to the unprecedented spot of “franchise champion” simply was a way to keep Alvarez from fighting Jermall Charlo, whom Shields trains. The WBC also announced Wednesday that it has declared Charlo, who held its interim middleweight title for 14 months, its world 160-pound champion.
Shields expressed his disappointment Thursday regarding the WBC’s decision before a press conference at NRG Stadium for the Charlo-Brandon Adams card.
“I think Canelo just didn’t wanna fight Jermall,” Shields told BoxingScene.com. “He sees something in Jermall that obviously a lot of other people see, also. Because Jermall has definitely been the most avoided middleweight in boxing today. I told Jermall, ‘Don’t get frustrated by it. It’s one of those things. Marvin Hagler went through the same thing. Sugar Ray Leonard went through the same thing. All of the top fighters went through the same thing.’
“People just feel that, ‘You know what? I don’t wanna take the risk [against Charlo].’ And this is supposed to be the sport of boxing, where the best is always supposed to fight the best, but it’s not happening. I don’t want us to fall into that category, but if the fights can’t be made, they can’t be made. But obviously, that fight could’ve been made between Jermall and Canelo. It could’ve been made.”
In its perplexing press release, the WBC stated that it will continue to recognize Alvarez as one of its 160-pound champions. The decision essentially enabled Alvarez to skip making a mandatory middleweight title defense against Charlo to pursue either a third fight against Gennadiy Golovkin, a 160-pound title unification fight against the Demetrius Andrade-Maciej Sulecki winner or another super middleweight title fight.
Shields consider the WBC’s call a politically correct way of taking away Alvarez’s middleweight crown.
“Canelo got stripped of the title,” Shields said. “Basically, that’s what it is. And Jermall is now the full middleweight champion. Canelo’s the franchise champion, whatever that means. His next fight was supposed to be against either another champion or his mandatory. It don’t look like he wants to do either of those fights. It looks like he wants to do something different. So Jermall is now the full champion at middleweight. That brings some credence to Jermall now. It just states that now all the other middleweights are in line to fight him. But we don’t wanna do what’s been happening to him. Whoever deserves a world title fight is supposed to get it. That’s been the rule forever, but everybody wants to avoid the rules.”
Houston’s Charlo (28-0, 21 KOs) will defend his WBC middleweight title against Los Angeles’ Adams (21-2, 13 KOs) on Saturday night at NRG Arena. Their 12-round main event will headline Showtime’s tripleheader, which is scheduled to start at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
