By: Hans Themistode
It wasn’t the fight that Jermall Charlo, nor his fans for that matter, wanted but the current WBC middleweight titlist has his next opponent.
The truculent knockout artist will attempt to dazzle his hometown Houston crowd on June 18th, when he takes on fringe contender Maciej Sulecki. Initially, Charlo had been hoping to lure current pound-for-pound star Canelo Alvarez into the ring. However, once the Mexican native revealed that he would instead challenge WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol, followed by a third showdown against hated rival Gennadiy Golovkin, Charlo looked elsewhere.
Immediately, representatives of Charlo sent a lucrative offer in the direction of highly ranked contender and former junior middleweight titlist, Jaime Munguia. Ultimately, although both fighters agreed to face one another next, network disagreements pushed their showdown to the wayside. Now, the 31-year-old will attempt to defend his middleweight throne against a lesser-known target.
In the case of Sulecki, while he’s proven to be respectable, he’s come up short on the grandest of stages. In his lone crack at a world title against Demetrius Andrade in 2019, Sulecki was thoroughly outboxed and simply overmatched, losing every single round on all three judges’ scorecards. He has, however, reeled off two consecutive victories against two unknown entities in Sasha Yengoyan and Fouad El Massoudi.
With Charlo unable to land marquee showdowns at 160 pounds, the middleweight titlist will place his sole focus on Sulecki. While he’s wildly viewed as one of the premier 160 pounders in the world, his ring appearances have come few and far between as of late.
Over the past two years, Charlo has fought just once annually. Most recently, he scored a fairly wide unanimous decision victory over Juan Macias Montiel, almost a full year from his upcoming contest against Sulecki.