Jermall Charlo has been chasing a mega-fight against Canelo Alvarez for years. His exploits in recent years give enough proof that the Mexican learnt his lessons from that loss. There had been hope that Charlo, who grew up in Alief and still lives in the Houston area, would be next on Canelo's docket, but on Friday, the Mexican super middleweight champion announced he has signed to fight Dmitry Bivol on May 7. Canelo has signed a two-fight deal, with the second fight expected to cap the trilogy against Gennadiy Golovkin on Sept. Well, it was quite the encounter last night when middleweight king Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez squared off against unbeaten IBF super middle champion Caleb Plant in Las Vegas. The pound for pound king is an esteemed professional who trains regularly and does not fall out of shape in between fights. And away from that, he has given yet another body of proof that he is, indeed, the king of the super middleweight division. Eddie Hearn announced on Twitter that the unified super middleweight champ is now “focused on a return to the ring in November. In my list I have backed away from the stampede to anoint Vasyl Lomachenko as the world’s best, as have The Ring.
Notes: Decided to put Paul Butler in at the No. 10 spot; he does have the WBO belt, and his won over Jonas Sultan was thorough. Golovkin is the more interested of the two in clinching the undisputed title by taking the WBO belt held by Saunders. Joshua will be to the forefront, as he was in 2017. AJ will look to add New Zealander Joseph Parker’s WBO belt to his WBA, IBF and IBO titles in an eminently winnable unification fight late this April or early in May. Whichever of them is the last Brit standing should then find himself in a championship unification stadium bout, possibly against James DeGale if Chunky can redeem the shock loss of his world title to Caleb Truax. Terry Flanagan, Kal Yafai and Ryan Burnett face testing world title defences or unification fights. As will Fury, DeGale, Brook and Amir Khan, who is vowing to turn his back on reality shows and celebrity appearances to focus on three fights this year culminating in a shot at his third world title. He said he doesn’t know but then added, “I think around 36, 37, at the max.” At the moment, he said, his primary focus is Yildirim and unifying those 168-pound titles.
But then these ratings are made in the USA. The well-rounded performance against the then undefeated Brit, was also a message that anybody who wants to overcome the Mexican has a lot of work to do. The broken facial bone sustained by Saunders, though unfortunate, is enough of a warning signal to potential opponents that the 30-year-old Mexican means business and will stop at nothing to establish his greatness in sport. If this were the 2018 version of Jermall when he was still hungry and fighting two times per year, the Mexican star might be in danger of losing. I venture to suggest that our chauvinistic trans-Atlantic cousins will be given reason to widen their horizons as 2018 becomes a bonanza year for British boxing. The winner proceeds to the May final of the new World Boxing Super Series tournament, probably to face Callum Smith. April will be alive not only with Joshua mania but with Belfast bouncing as Carl Frampton continues his comeback against four-time world champion Nonito Donaire. In May, before a record crowd at AT&T Stadium outside Dallas, England's then-WBO champion Billy Joe Saunders suffered broken orbital bones in the eighth round as his corner waved the white towel before the ninth began.
30 seconds, work,' bellows Bivol's corner - and he obliges, pushing Canelo back once more. Plant is the on to force Canelo to the corner now. The big fights in Britain are now packing more fans into football grounds than… All arrows now point to undefeated Caleb ‘Sweetlands’ Plant, who holds the IBF belt. Then, assuming the contractual minefield can be negotiated, Wilder should be bringing his WBC belt to a late-summer Wembley extravaganza in which Joshua would bid to become the first undisputed world heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis. By then, assuming David Haye’s creaking body holds up, he and Tony Bellew will have returned to the 02 on May 5 for a rematch to determine which of them gets into the mega-bucks mix. The Hatfield traveller is pushing for a super-fight in Las Vegas against the winner of the probable May 5 rematch between Golovkin and Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez for the majority of the middleweight belts. Billy Joe Saunders is hoping to leap onto that bandwagon following the brilliant out-classing of the big punching David Lemieux in Canada to keep his world middleweight title, therby signing off 2017 for British boxing in style.