Jermell Charlo didn’t think twice when Al Haymon called him about boxing Canelo Alvarez.
Accepting this task required Charlo to move up two weight classes, a total of 14 pounds, and to end what will be a 16-month layoff against the toughest opponent of his 15-year professional career. This is a fight that the undisputed 154-pound champion has wanted for many years, though, long before Alvarez moved up and won world titles in the middleweight, super middleweight and light heavyweight divisions.
In addition to a career-high payday and an opportunity to become an undisputed champion in a second division, Charlo craves an opportunity to prove that he is indeed a great fighter.
“When I got the call, there’s nothing that I could say other than jump on it,” Charlo explained. “Let’s go. And let’s get it. Because my whole career, it’s been about almost chasing Canelo. You know, like Canelo been a top guy for a long time. And if you wanna be great, you always wanna just fight the top guy.
“You wanna be, you know, and I see you, Robert Diaz, in the crowd, because he remember from Golden Boy [Promotions], us always tryna work and tryna possibly get that fight. But it presented itself now. It’s here. And I just gotta get in there and do my job and [do] the best that I can do and be the best that I can be.”
The 33-year-old Charlo, of Richmond, Texas, became boxing’s first fully unified 154-pound champion of the four-belt era in his last fight. He has not fought, however, since he knocked out Argentina’s Brian Castano (17-1-2, 12 KOs) in the 10th round of their rematch to add the WBO junior middleweight title to his IBF, WBA and WBC 154-pound crowns in May 2022 at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California.
Charlo (35-1-1, 19 KOs) suffered two fractures in his left hand during a sparring session almost eight months ago that indefinitely postponed his 154-pound title fight against Australia’s Tim Tszyu (23-0, 17 KOs), which was scheduled for January 28 in Las Vegas. Charlo-Tszyu wasn’t rescheduled before Charlo chose to fight Alvarez (59-2-2, 39 KOs), which led the WBO to rule that it’ll strip Charlo of its belt and elevate Tszyu from interim champ to full champ as soon as the bell rings to mark the start of the Alvarez-Charlo clash.
By waiting until Alvarez and Charlo fight to take Charlo’s title, the WBO afforded them the opportunity to promote their showdown as “undisputed versus undisputed.” Tszyu, 28, has long been the WBO’s mandatory challenger for one of Charlo’s four titles.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.