LAS VEGAS – As one Charlo impressively returned closer to form Saturday night, the other is nearing his comeback to the ring.
BoxingScene has learned that a Thursday summit between principal players at Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions and Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions included a conversation about making a junior middleweight bout between previously undisputed champion Jermell Charlo and unbeaten top contender Vergil Ortiz Jnr.
“I’m excited for the future of boxing,” De La Hoya told BoxingScene of the session with former bitter rival PBC. “We talked about various fights we can make together, including Vergil-Jermell.”
Another individual close to the situation told BoxingScene that Ortiz, 23-0 (21 KOs), is being pointed to a late-September return after undergoing successful hand surgery to repair an injury suffered in his February triumph over former WBA titleholder Israil Madrimov.
Jermell Charlo, 35-2-1 (19 KOs), hasn’t fought since losing a September 2023 unanimous decision to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, but he has reunited with his twin brother and former two-division champion Jermall Charlo in training camp and accompanied him to Las Vegas for this fight week.
Coming back for his first bout since November 2023 after experiencing some mental-health troubles in the interim, Jermall scored three knockdowns of Thomas LaManna in Saturday night’s co-main event and won by sixth-round technical knockout when the ringside doctor ruled LaManna was incapable of continuing.
De La Hoya said it’s too early to estimate when an Ortiz-Charlo bout will occur, but Jermall’s Saturday night revelation of the prior performances that made the twin brothers the first to ever capture belts on the same 2016 night in Las Vegas heightened the interest in getting the 35-year-olds back in the ring on a regular basis.
Jermall is expected to meet current WBA interim belt holder Caleb Plant later this year, and the winner will be in prime position to land a shot at undisputed super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez.
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.