Stateside in New York this weekend we saw a tremendous World Championship triple-header in the Jr Middleweight division with Erislandy Lara taking on Terrell Gausha while Jarrett Hurd locked horns with Austin Trout in an unforgettable battle; however the big news of the night came from the fight sandwiched between those two encounters which saw the young, promising knockout artists Erickson Lubin (18-0) and Jermell Charlo (29-0) collide and duke it out for the WBC Jr Middleweight World Championship.
The fight was what it promised to be, an explosive affair with a knockout ending almost assured. But the manner in which Jermell Charlo, the identical twin brother of the undefeated former Jr Middleweight champion, Jermall Charlo. The victory has sought to raise the stock behind the evergrowing Charlo brand with an emphatic and brutal destruction of Lubin inside of 141 seconds of the first bell.
While the matchup of undefeated big punchers was regarded as one of the most intriguing matchups of the year, Jermell Charlo showed us an enormous gulf in class. After both combatants came out at the bell, boxing cautiously and looking to work behind their jabs. However, Charlo had noticed the tendency Lubin had to lean in and in boxing, there is a common phrase we hear ‘no second chances’ and Charlo proved that was the case as Charlo unfurled a strong right uppercut that he caught Lubin leaning into. The fight was waved off with Lubin incoherent on the canvas and in desperate trouble struggling to return to his feet.
After the fight, Charlo called for a unification opportunity while directing particular focus on Jarrett Hurd, who became the first man to stop Austin Trout inside the distance, Trout was somebody who had gone the distance with renown champions such as Erislandy Lara, Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez and Jermell’s twin brother, Jermall Charlo during his title reign in the Jr Middleweight weight class. Jermall Charlo said in his post-fight interview with Showtime’s Jim Gray “We’re going to unify. The other champions want to fight me and I’ll take any of them. Give me another title. I want Hurd. Hurd just won. Give me Hurd.”