Is it the night of early knockouts on Showtime? After Gervonta Davis dismissed Jesus Cuellar early in the opener, Jermall Charlo one upped him by getting rid of Hugo Centeno Jr in two on a beautiful left hook inside.
Hugo Centeno Jr (26-2, 14 KOs) focused on his defense in the opening frame. He moved around the ring and moved his head well when he was stationery. He fainted and worked his jab a little bit, clearly weary of Jermall Charlo’s (27-0, 21 KOs) very real power. He didn’t win the round as Jermall landed the real shots, but it certainly went better for him than the second round did.
In the second Hugo decided to stand and fight for a few seconds and that is all it took. Jermall clipped him with a pair of impressive looking right hands. Surprisingly the then unbeaten California took them well and fired back. Unfortunately, he didn’t take the left hook behind them well at all. Seconds later he was sleeping on the canvas with a referee waving his hands above him while Jermall Charlo celebrated in the middle of the ring.
Gennady Golovkin was called out in the post fight interview and Jermall Charlo is now one of his several mandatory challengers. That is an obviously great fight, but I am skeptical that we will ever see it. GGG will want to fight Canelo this fall and then would first have to deal with his IBF mandatory in Sergiy Derevnyanchenko is he wants to keep that belt. He’ll also pick up a WBA mandatory challenge next week in the winner between Danny Jacobs and Maciej Sulecki. I’m guessing GGG ends up giving up belts sooner rather than later.
