Jermell Charlo says he’s not fighting Kell Brook in the UK

Boxingnews24.com

By Scott Gilfoid

Kell Brook is going to need to come to the U.S if he wants to fight for a world title against WBC junior middleweight champion Jermell Charlo (30-0, 15 KOs). Brook wants to fight for a world title in 2019, but it’s not going to happen with Charlo if it means that the fight will need to take place in the UK.

Charlo says after saw what took place in the heavyweight unification fight last weekend between IBF/WBA champion Anthony Joshua and WBO champion Joseph Parker, he doesn’t want to come over to the UK to fight Brook.

“I’m not going to the UK, I’m the champ of the world. Come over here and get some of this work,” Charlo said to Fighthype about a fight between him and Brook. The s*** I’ve seen over the weekend [Joshua-Parker], I ain’t happy with the UK. Y’all are all hype to me!”

The scoring of Brook’s fight against Gennady Golovkin from 2016 might be something that would give Charlo cause for concern in traveling to England to defend his WBC title. The scoring for the Golovkin-Brook fight was way out of whack for what took place inside the ring in that fight. One judge had Brook winning 3 rounds to 1 after the 4th, whereas the other two judges had it knotted up at 2-2. In contrast, HBO had Golovkin winning rounds 3 rounds to 1. That’s the same scoring that Boxing News 24 had it. Brook was losing the fight to Golovkin at the time that he quit in the 5th. Brook only had one good round in the entire fight, and that was the 2nd. Even in that round, Brook did nothing until the last 30 seconds, when he landed four punches. The scoring was so off for the Golovkin vs. Brook fight that it wasn’t even funny. The good thing is that the fight didn’t go to the scorecards, because if the judges had continued to score it the way they had done in the first 4 rounds, Brook likely would have been given a decision win. A decision like that would have created a tremendous uproar in the boxing world. For all intents and purposes, Brook was in the full retreat mode from the 3rd round on, and getting pelted with shots while running from GGG. As soon as Golovkin landed a monstrous right hand to the head of Brook early in the 3rd, Special K was finished for the night.

Brook hasn’t made a name for himself at 154 for him to be pushing a champion like Charlo to come to the UK to defend his title. Brook needs to start over in the 154 lb. weight class, because what he achieved at 147 is meaningless. Brook is trying to get a big fight against Amir Khan for later this year in the UK, and that fight is more of a match based on popularity rather than it being a contest between relevant fighters.

Charlo issues with him coming to the UK is due to the way the Joshua-Parker fight was officiated by the referee, who kept pulling Parker off AJ when he was trying to work on the inside. It looked to some boxing fans like the referee was interfering with the course of the fight by stopping Parker from taking the fight to the inside. It would have looked bad even if the roles were reversed and Joshua was being stopped from working on the inside. With Joshua being the home fighter in the UK, it gave the appearance that he was being given preferential treatment by the referee.

Well, I don’t think it matters what Charlo says, because Brook isn’t likely going to go after him anyway when he chooses to fight for a world title in the UK. It’s almost guaranteed that Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn will aim him in the direction of fighting the winner of the fight between WBO junior middleweight champion Sadam Ali and Liam Smith. Ali is very beatable, and Smith just the same. Whoever wins that fight will be easy pickings for Brook or any good welterweight or junior middleweight that wants to win a title. Hearn has got the money to insert Brook in the position to fight the winner of the Ali vs. Smith fight, so it’s likely to happen unless someone gets there first.

Jermell, 27, will be making his next title defense on June 9 against an opponent still to be determined on Showtime Boxing at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Former world champion Austin Trout is being mentioned as the likely opponent for Charlo to fight. Trout is a pretty awful choice of an opponent for any champion to be fighting. Trout’s record in his last three fights is 1-2. You don’t usually see fighters with records like that getting title shots. Hopefully a better opponent is found for Jermell to defend against. I’d prefer to see Jermell defend against Erickson Lubin in a rematch than watching a Charlo-Trout fight.