It’s Official: Charlo Played Soft For Canelo

By Scoop Malinowski

Three world champion caliber fighters are not holding back on their analysis of Jermell Charlo’s embarrassing, pathetic, and perhaps corrupt non-effort vs Canelo Alvarez. They, of course, can’t bluntly say Charlo threw the fight or played soft for the money maker from Mexico but they are coming as close as possible to making such allegations.

Here’s what Tim Tszyu told www.Boxingscene.com:  “I think Charlo was there just to survive, in my opinion. He didn’t have any competitiveness in him. The Charlo that fought Brian Castano wanted to win, you know? This Canelo fight, there was – I don’t know – he never wanted to win. It was like he was there just to take part, not to get knocked out, play it smart, move around and come out not a winner. That’s how I see it.”

“It was weird,” Tszyu said. “If you’re given an opportunity to fight for undisputed, to create legacy, you go straight at it. Even in between the rounds, his coach [Derrick James] was going off, saying, ‘Man, you’re losing the fight. You gotta actually go out and win.’ And as soon as the round started, he would go out on his same back foot, throw a couple jabs. A lot of the time it was just defense. He was just thinking about defense, not getting knocked out.”

Oscar De La Hoya also blasted the terrible performance by Charlo:  “Canelo-Charlo was a super boring fight. [Charlo] just showed up for a paycheck. Canelo, obviously like I said, on quicksand throwing bombs. He won easily. But anyway, if we want boxing to survive and thrive we need super fights, like all the time. We are watching boxing die slowly…”

Paulie Malignaggi saw no attempt by Charlo in any of the twelve rounds to try to win the fight:  “I never felt like Jermell Charlo committed to trying to win the fight. He didn’t try anything. He showed up for a check. You’ve got to at least try to win the fight in order to actually be defined as trying to be great.”

At this time it’s not known if the Charlo vs Canelo “fight” or fake fixed sparring session will be investigated. Al Haymon’s PBC promoted the Charlo vs Canelo sparring session and at this time, no PBC officials have confessed the fight was a scripted choreography that was “managed in advance” as Jim Lampley once described Al Haymon’s business methods…