By: Sean Crose
This Saturday night, the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, New York, will host the final major fight card of 2018. The fights begin airing live at 8 PM eastern standard time, on Fox, which has recently made a deal with Al Haymon’s Premiere Boxing Champions, the promoter behind the card. There will essentially be two main events, each featuring one of the Charlo twins, 27-0 middleweight Jermall, and 31-0 super welterweight Jermell. The Houston, Texas natives have a strong chance of landing notable fights at the pinnacle their respective divisions, provided they get past their respective competition this coming weekend.
Jermell will be facing the 27-2 Tony Harrison for the WBC super welterweight title that he won in 2016 by knocking out John Jackson and has successfully defended three times since. Harrison, who hails from Detroit, will be coming off a split decision win over Ishe Smith last May. This will be Harrison’s second attempt at a world title. Back in 2017, he was knocked out by Jarret Hurd while competing for the IBF super middleweight title in Alabama. Since that time, the fighter has gone on to win three straight. The match with Charlo will be a scheduled twelve round affair.
Meanwhile, Jermell’s brother, Jermall, will be facing off against the 28-1 Matvey Korobov for the interim WBC middleweight title strap. Stepping into the ring at Barclay’s for his third fight in a row, Jermall recently bested Hugo Centeno Jr by knockout last April. Korobov, on the other hand, is coming off a March unanimous decision victory over Jonathan Batista in Miami. This will be Korobov’s second bout this year after taking all of 2017 off. Korobov’s one loss was to Ireland’s Andy Lee, who knocked the Russian out in December of that year in Las Vegas. Korobov will be facing quite the challenge in Jermall, who has stopped his last three opponents within the distance.
Jermall was originally set to face Willie Monroe Jr on Saturday, but the Monroe, who is best known for getting stopped by Gennady Golovkin in 2015, showed traces of a prohibited substance in a VADA drug test and the fight was subsequently called off. Fortunately for all parties involved, Korobov was able to step in and fill the void left by Monroe. Should he somehow emerge victorious in the scheduled 12 round affair with Jermall, Korobov will have most likely pulled off the upset of the year.