Demetrius Andrade is out of the business of calling out other fighters.
His promoter, however, isn’t ready to let his divisional peers off that easy.
Eddie Hearn—chairman of Matchroom Boxing and Andrade’s promoter since 2017—continues to push for a showdown between the reigning WBO middleweight titlist and current unbeaten WBC middleweight title claimant Jermall Charlo (32-0, 22KOs). What behooves him is how the fans and media haven’t been more assertive in calling for what would be an historic unification bout between undefeated American middleweight titlists.
It’s a question that he asked of the public following Andrade’s recent second-round knockout of Jason Quigley this past Friday on DAZN from SNHU Arena in Manchester, New Hampshire.
“Jermall Charlo, it just baffles me that this fight with Demetrius Andrade can’t be made,” Hearn told BoxingScene.com. “You’re an undefeated American champion. He comes out and says, ‘I want to unify like my brother (lineal/WBC/WBA/IBF junior middleweight champion Jermell Charlo)’ but doesn’t make any effort to do so.”
“Now, the mad thing about American fight fans, they’re not quite as mad or passionate as the Brits. If this were the case in England, the Brits would not allow two undefeated fighters in the same division to go this long without fighting each other. It’s undefeated world champion versus undefeated world champion.”
Such a fight would mark the first time in the multi-belt era that two undefeated reigning middleweight titlists from the United States would meet in a title unification match. Yet it remains a cat and mouse game, ever since Andrade became a two-division titlist with his WBO middleweight title win in October 2018.
Providence’s Andrade and Houston’s Charlo have both enjoyed lengthy, if not uninspiring, title reigns. Andrade’s win over Ireland’s Quigley marked his fifth successful title defense at middleweight. Charlo has not fought since a 12-round win over Juan Macias Montiel this past June in his Houston hometown, lodging his fourth successful defense since being elevated from WBC interim to World champion in 2019.
Conversation for such a fight has remained one way. It’s come up before and after every DAZN show featuring Andrade or any other middleweight fight where his name is mentioned. The opposite holds true whenever Charlo fights on Premier Boxing Champions (PBC)-branded shows, be it Showtime, Fox or even Pay-Per-View which Jermall and Jermell appeared in separately billed co-headliners on the same show last September.
“He wants to do Pay-Per-View. No problem, we can fight on their platform,” Hearn notes. “He can come to our platform. It’s not like we’re pricing ourselves out. They’re not even letting the conversation get there. It’s baffling.”
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox