Jermell Charlo vs. Charles Hatley this Saturday; Indongo vs. Lipinets possible

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By Jim Dower: WBC light middleweight champion Jermell Charlo (28-0, 13 KOs) will be defending his title this Saturday night against #1 WBC Charles Hatley (26-1-1, 18 KOs) at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Charlo is the betting favorite at Bovado by the line -1100 to +650 for Hatley. It still figures to be a competitive match-up from start to finish.

Hatley, 31, has only been beaten once in his career in getting stopped straightaway in a 1st round knockout loss to Leonardo Tyner in August 2012. Hatley has since put together a string of 9 straight victories since that time. However, opposition has been a mixed bag of mediocre and some cases poor opponents. Hatley did stop the 41-year-old Anthony Mundine in the 11th round in his last fight in November 2015. But this wasn’t a prime Mundine obviously.

Mundine hasn’t won a fight in 3 years since his win over Siarhei Rabchanka in 2014. Hatley hasn’t fought since his fight with Mundine. Hatley would was out of the ring for over an entire year. He didn’t fight in 2016 at all, and he hasn’t fought in the first 4 months of 2017. That’s a year and a half of inactivity for Hatley with his pro boxing career. Coming off of a long layoff like that to face a talented fighter like Charlo is going to be tough for Hatley. Ideally, you’d like to have seen Hatley fight a couple of tune-ups before taking on someone as good as Charlo. It’s unclear why Hatley’s promoter hasn’t kept him busy.

The Charlo-Hatley fight will be televised on Showtime Championship Boxing. The fight is the co-feature bout on the undercard of the welterweight match between Shawn Porter and Andre Berto.

Jermell has looked good in his last two fights in beating John Jackson and Joachim Alcine by knockout. Not normally a knockout puncher, Charlo is sitting down on his shots a little bit more at this point in his career than he had in the past. Before knocking out his last two opponents, Charlo had a string of 4 fights that went the distance against Vanes Martirosyan, Mario Alberto Lozano, Gabriel Rosado, and Charles Bellamy.

Jermell did not look good in the Rosado and Martirosyan fights. Martirosyan appeared to do enough to earn a decision over Charlo, but the judges scored it in favor or Charlo by the scores 97-93, 96-94 and 96-94. It was a really bad performance by Charlo in that fight. The good news is that Charlo has looked better since that fight. The bad thing is that he’s been facing lesser opposition. For that reason it’s impossible to know if he’s improved or not. I guess we’ll find out on Saturday night when he gets inside the ring with Hatley.

Hatley might be able to give Charlo problems. It depends. If it’s the Hatley that was blasted out immediately by Tyner, then Charlo will have little problems beating him. If the Hatley we saw in his fight with Mundine, then he could possibly beat Charlo. It’s hard to know. Both guys have a lot of unknowns about them going into their fight on Saturday. We do know that welterweight contender Errol Spence’s trainer is saying that Spence got the better of Hatley in a sparring session they had. How much weight you can give that is debatable.

Sparring is a lot different from actual fighting. If it’s true that Spence got the better of Hatley in their sparring, then it perhaps doesn’t bode well for him facing Charlo. Spence also spars with Jermell. We haven’t heard how those sparring sessions have gone. Charlo looks a lot bigger than Spence.

Julius Indongo may need to face Sergey Lipinets next

IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Julius Indongo (22-0, 11 KOs) may need to face his #1 IBF mandatory challenger Sergey Lipinets (12-0, 10 KOs) next rather than a top fighter like WBC/WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford. According to Fight News, the 28-year-old Lipinets is Indongo’s International Boxing Federation mandatory challenger following his 8th round knockout victory over Leonardo Zappavigna last year in December.

Indongo won the WBA 140b title last Saturday night in beating WBA champion Ricky Burns by a 12 round unanimous decision in front of his own Scottish crowd at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland. Indongo won the fight by the scores 120-108, 118-110 and 116-112. Burns’ promoter Eddie Hearn says he has promotional options on Indongo due to a rematch clause that he had in the contract. Hearn mentioned several possibilities for Indongo’s next fight with him and none of them involved Lipinets.

Hearn said Crawford is an option for Indongo, as well as former WBA lightweight champion Anthony Crolla and possibly Burns. Hearn promotes Crolla, so that’s a fight that he could easily make and it would do well if the fight were staged in Crolla’s home city of Manchester, England. However, Crolla would need to move up in weight to the 140lb division, and that could be hard on him. Crolla has lost his last 2 fights to Jorge Linares. Sticking Crolla inside the ring with Indongo might not be the best thing for him right now.

”Someone like Terence Crawford against Indongo is a great fight,” said Hearn to IFL TV in discussing what fight he’d like to make for Indongo next. ”We have a rematch clause and promotional options. The rematch is one that people will be queuing up to see. I’ll be working with him in his next fight. Look at the options. Maybe we’ll find a fight with him with one of our 140 boys. Maybe Crolla moves up to fight. Sometimes you have to deal with that if you have a rematch clause. If the rematch doesn’t happen, you have promotional options. I’ll probably be working with Indongo moving forward,” said Hearn.

The boxing fans are interested in seeing Indongo face Crawford in a unification match. However, Crawford has a fight next May against Felix Diaz. If Indongo is going to face Crawford next, then it would involve him staying outside of the ring for a little while as he waits for him to recover physically from the Diaz fight.