When Will We Learn if Jermall Charlo is Very Good Or Great?

By Keith Idec

NEW YORK – The self-professed “Future of Boxing” strode across the stage Thursday wearing a pink trench coat and matching sneakers.

It was maybe more a defiant act of confidence from a middleweight champion full of self-belief than it was a fashion statement. As if to tell everyone assembled at Barclays Center and those watching on FS1, “I’ll wear what I want, say what I want and couldn’t care less what you think.”

Make no mistake – Charlo cares what we think. That gigantic chip on his shoulder sits there, prominently displayed, because this unbeaten Houston native knows he has yet to convert everyone that either pays or gets paid to watch him fight into believers.

What we’ve learned thus far is that the slightly heavier Charlo twin is a formidable blend of power, rage, speed and swag. His two most noteworthy junior-middleweight wins – a knockout of Julian Williams and a points win against Austin Trout – and quick knockouts of Sebastian Heiland and Hugo Centeno Jr. in middleweight matches have at least taught us that.

What we want to know, though, is can Jermall Charlo become the transcendent star he and others have predicted?

Can Charlo clean out a loaded middleweight division and achieve genuine greatness? Or is he a very good fighter who has been overrated due to manipulative matchmaking?

Unfortunately for Charlo, he has yet to step into the ring with the type of accomplished, high-profile opponent that’ll provide us with accurate answers to those career-defining questions.

Two months ago, the WBC ordered former champion Gennady Golovkin to face Charlo in an elimination match to determine Canelo Alvarez’s mandatory challenger. That’s just the type of challenge Charlo needs to prove himself, but Golovkin won’t be forced to get through Charlo to land a third fight against Alvarez.

Money will dictate when Golovkin and Alvarez fight again, not a sanctioning organization’s mandate. If Golovkin signs with DAZN, he and Alvarez almost certainly will square off for the third time at some point in 2019.

Al Haymon, Charlo’s adviser, has made eight-figure offers to Golovkin (38-1-1, 34 KOs) in hopes the Kazakh knockout artist will join Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions. Haymon’s plan is to lure the aged Golovkin into the PBC/FOX/Showtime fold, eventually match him against Charlo and, perhaps as important, prevent Canelo-Golovkin III from taking place on DAZN.

Alvarez obviously would secure Charlo the type of chance and accompanying payday he has sought. A fight versus Alvarez is much more improbable than making Golovkin-Charlo because it’d require Charlo to fight Alvarez on DAZN, something Haymon will go out of his way and overpay to avoid.

The man aggressively pursuing Alvarez at the moment might be the most likely elite middleweight to provide Charlo with the true test he needs. If Daniel Jacobs cannot get the type of purse he wants for facing Mexico’s Alvarez on May 4 in Las Vegas, the IBF middleweight champion can spurn DAZN and rejoin Haymon’s PBC to eventually battle Charlo.

Jacobs lost a close unanimous decision to Golovkin in March 2017 at Madison Square Garden. And Alvarez (51-1-2, 35 KOs), the WBA/WBC middleweight champ, is unquestionably boxing’s cash cow among non-heavyweights.

But Brooklyn’s Jacobs probably is boxing’s third-best middleweight, the perfect foe for Charlo (27-0, 21 KOs), assuming he can’t fight Golovkin or Alvarez. Jacobs (35-2, 29 KOs) repeatedly has expressed his willingness to face Charlo, whom Jacobs confronted in a Barclays Center hallway nine months ago to generate even more interest in a bout between them.

Demetrius Andrade (26-0, 16 KOs), the WBO middleweight champion, would teach us important things about Charlo’s capabilities, too. But Andrade, also contractually committed to DAZN, wants those sizeable Alvarez or Golovkin checks for himself.

Charlo can only hope one of those aforementioned middleweights will fight him at some point in 2019. Whether he has been blatantly avoided or has been victimized by promotional and network allegiances is debatable.

For now, he’ll make the first defense of the WBC’s interim championship against Matt Korobov on Saturday night in Brooklyn.

He has an expansive platform to impress millions of people because FOX will air the Charlo-Korobov bout as the main event of a tripleheader. That telecast, scheduled to start at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT, also will include Jermell Charlo’s 12-round defense of his WBC super welterweight title against Detroit’s Tony Harrison.

If nothing else, Korobov (28-1, 14 KOs) is the best opponent Charlo will have faced in three middleweight bouts.

The Russian southpaw is commonly considered an underachiever. He’s still a bigger, stronger challenger than Willie Monroe Jr. (23-3, 6 KOs), the man Korobov happily replaced on six days’ notice once Monroe tested positive for a “steroidal substance,” according to a statement released by the WBC.

The 35-year-old Korobov believes he has “nothing to lose” because this time a week ago he was training for a non-televised eight-rounder against Colombia’s Juan DeAngel (21-9-1, 19 KOs) on the Charlo-Monroe undercard. That’s a reasonable belief, particularly for an aging challenger who has had so much trouble securing a chance to redeem himself following a sixth-round, technical-knockout defeat to Andy Lee in their WBO middleweight title fight four years ago.

Korobov had won all five rounds on each of the three judges’ scorecards before Lee landed a counter right hook in the sixth round that completely changed Korobov’s career in December 2014. He’s skillful, strong and desperate to finally realize his potential, a combination that makes him dangerous.

Then again, Korobov spent a couple months preparing for a much easier fight. That could place him at a mental and physical disadvantage, even though he assured reporters Thursday that losing two extra pounds, down to the middleweight limit of 160, hasn’t been a problem.

“Every fight is tough,” Charlo said. “I’m not sleeping on this guy. I’m sleeping this guy.”

That was Charlo’s clever way of predicting he’ll knock out Korobov. If that happens, the unconvinced inevitably will blame another Charlo win on Korobov taking their fight on such short notice.

If Korobov, consistently listed as at least a 10-1 underdog, pulls off an upset, Charlo’s detractors will revel in the combative champion’s inability to make sure he even encounters Golovkin, Alvarez or Jacobs. If Charlo overcomes Korobov, the best of his three middleweight opponents, we’ll still have more questions than answers after Saturday night.

First and foremost, we still won’t know whether Jermall Charlo is very good or great.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.