THE Brothers Charlo, perhaps the most malcontented
identical twins to arrive on the American boxing scene in recent memory, have
spent the better part of the past two to three years working on what marketers
blandly like to to call “brand identity.” From T-shirts and gewgaws to their
own promotional label and a day-in-the-life-of Youtube channel, the Houstonians
sought to promulgate their “Lions Only” slogan across the commercial spectrum
behind resolutely tetchy personas.
If force of personality is what the brothers
were after, rest assured, it was obtained in spades. But what lent legitimacy
to that appeal, what prevented their attitude from slipping into mere
attitudinizing, a hallmark of this current TikTok Age, was that it was, to a
certain extent, buttressed by solid evidence from the only place that should
matter in the business of prizefighting: the ring.
The elder and slightly bigger Charlo, Jermall,
captured the boxing imagination first with his malicious stoppage of Julian
Williams in 2016; the younger sibling, Jermell, followed up 10 months later
when he mowed down top prospect (now contender) Erickson Lubin in the first
round. Still, in the years since those wins, the brothers seemed to have lost
some of their momentum, each for different reasons. Jermall, for the life of
him, couldn’t lure a credible middleweight opponent and Jermell dropped a
controversial decision to top contender Tony Harrison. Nevertheless the
brothers continued to be ornery and unapologetic as ever, and if their
performances last weekend were any indication, they are not going away anytime
soon.
Saturday night (September 26) at a crowdless Mohegan Sun Arena, the Charlo twins both notched career-best victories in their pay-per-view debut, with Jermall outpointing Ukrainian sparkplug Sergiy Derevyanchenko over 12 rounds to retain his WBC middleweight title, and Jermell stopping crude, but brawny, Dominican Jeison Rosario in the eighth round to unite three of the four fragments of the junior middleweight crown.
In the middleweight main event, Jermall, defending his title for the third time, operated behind his lengthy jab and precise power punches, whipping crunching uppercuts on the inside, booming right hands at distance, and generally kept Derevyanchenko at bay. He nearly dropped Derevyanchenko at the end of the third round and staggered him in the first, ninth and 11th rounds as well.
Though the iron-chinned Derevyanchenko was
already bleeding from a cut around his eyes by the middle rounds, he put up his
best effort in that period. Whenever he was able to successfully weave his way
inside – no small task – Derevyanchenko unloaded his snappy combinations and
forced the taller boxer to retreat along the ropes. But for the most part, the
fight was fought on Jermall’s terms, that is, at the end of his jab. Judges Tim
Cheatham (116-112), David Sutherland (118-110), and Steve Weisfeld (117-111)
all scored the bout in favor of Jermall.
Though Jermall benefited from a certain amount of good timing – this version of Derevyanchenko, it could be argued, was diminished, given the punishment he incurred in his previous outing at the hands of Gennadiy Golovkin – there is no question that this victory gives him the kind of credibility that has so far eluded him in the 160-pound class. Harvey Dock officiated.
Not to be upstaged, in the super-welterweight
unification, Jermell produced one of the strangest knockouts on record, when he
dropped Rosario for the third and final time in the eighth round with nothing
more than a standard jab to the body, possibly the solar plexus. Can a lone jab
to the abdominals send a fighter into the throes of death? It seemed to in this
case: it threw Rosario flat on his back, arms akimbo, and causing him to make a
lurching motion with his head. Then, as he tried to get up, he stumbled into
the ropes and cried out in pain as referee Dock waved off the bout 21 seconds
into the round.
It was a strange ending, indeed, to what was
heating up to be a promising fight. Knockdowns aside, Rosario was the one
bringing the fight to Charlo. But Rosario, who had been knocked out in the
past, is hardly what you would call a defensively responsible fighter. He
showed no ability to slip punches and often squared up as he chased Charlo. In
fact, the knockout blow may have been a residual effect from the previous
round, in which Charlo dropped a careless Rosario with a left hook-right hand
combination. Charlo also scored a knockdown in the first round, a left that
landed on the temple.
The Verdict Top class from the Charlos.
FULL RESULTS
Jermell Charlo (153 3/4lbs), 34-1 (18), w ko 8 Jeison Rosario (153 1/2lbs), 20-2-1 (14); Jermall Charlo (159 3/4lbs), 31-1 (22), w pts 12 Sergiy Derevyanchenko (159 1/2lbs), 13-3 (10); Daniel Roman (121 1/4lbs), 28-3-1 (10), w pts 12 Juan Carlos Payano (121 1/2lbs), 21-4 (9); Luis Nery (121 1/2lbs), 31-0 (24), w pts 12 Aaron Alameda (121 1/2lbs), 25-1 (13); John Riel Casimero (117 3/4lbs), 30-4 (21), w rsf 3 Duke Micah (117 1/4lbs), 24-1 (19); Bakhram Murtazaliev (156 1/4lbs), 18-0 (14), w rsf 4 Manny Woods (161lbs), 16-10-1 (6).