Eddie Hearn says he was contacted by Jermall Charlo recently about his wanting to fight Canelo Alvarez. Although Hearn isn’t entirely ruling out the possibility of the inactive 32-year-old Jermall (32-0, 22 KOs) fighting Canelo, he says the priority is Dmitry Bivol for September.
WBC middleweight champ Jermall hasn’t fought in two years, and surprisingly he hasn’t been stripped or been downgraded to the ’emeritus champion in recess’ by the World Boxing Council.
“Yeah, he texted me the other day. We had a funny exchange of messages. He wants the fight,” said Eddie Hearn to Boxing Social about Jermall Charlo contacting him recently about wanting a fight against Canelo Alvarez.
“I don’t think he’s [Jermall] on the radar, but who knows? The priority now is to make the Dmitry Bivol rematch,” said Hearn.
It’s far from a certainty that Canelo will be fighting Dmitry Bivol in September because the match has to be negotiated. With Canelo sending a message to Bivol about the rematch needing to be under the same terms as their fight last year, a second contest may not happen.
Bivol wants the rematch at 168 for Canelo’s four belts. Moreover, he’s not going to want to have Canelo try and dictate terms by insisting the rematch take place in a tiny 18 x 18 ring and back at the same venue in La Vegas as last time.
WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman had this to say on social media today about why his organization hasn’t stripped Jermall Charlo of his middleweight title:
“Charlo was going to fight Sulecki and got hurt. WBC ordered interim title, and Adames was crowned. Charlo fell into a serious episode of mental health problems, and we are in no way going to turn our backs on him. He is about to return to the ring.”
Many boxing fans are less than sympathetic about Jermall’s problems, as they point out a lot of fighters have problems with mental health or injury issues. They’re not getting special breaks from the sanctioning bodies, as we see with Charlo.
For Charlo to sit on his WBC 160-lb title for two years without defending it, it’s sad for the many contenders that have waited without getting a shot at his belt.
Moving forward, Sulaiman and the WBC need to give champions that are mentally are physically unable to fight their ‘champion in recess’ tag rather than letting them sit on their titles for years without making a defense.
