Decision to Charlo, hands down
World Boxing Council middleweight champion improves to 29-0 with victory over Adams
It had been seven years since Jermall Charlo last fought in Houston. He made up for lost time.
Entering the ring with former Texans star Andre Johnson by his side and Houston rapper Z-Ro performing his Houston classic “Mo City Freestyle” while most of the sellout crowd of 6,408 in attendance at NRG Arena rapped along, Charlo, wearing Houston Oilerscolored trunks and boots, won a unanimous decision over Brandon Adams to retain his World Boxing Council middleweight championship on Saturday night.
Two judges had Charlo, 29-0, winning all 12 rounds with scores of 120-108, while one judge had Charlo winning 119-109.
Charlo appeared to be way too much for Adams in the early rounds, hurting him near the end of the third round only to have Adams saved by the bell. Late in the fifth round, Charlo stunned Adams with a left jab, then got Adams in the corner and unleashed a flurry of body shots that only relented when the much shorter Adams was able grab Charlo around the waist and tie him up.
After the fight, Charlo answered questions with an ice pack on his left hand and said he hurt the hand near the end of the second round when he hit Adams with a left hook and tried to follow with a right uppercut.
“That’s part of boxing,” Charlo said. “I hurt my hand, but I tried to hide it. I kept throwing it, but my jab wasn’t throwing like it was supposed to.”
Ronnie Shields, Charlo’s trainer, said he changed up his fighter’s game plan after he heard about the hand injury between rounds.
“When he hurt his hand, we had to change things and keep him on the outside and just win the fight,” Shields said. “He wanted a knockout, but we can get a knockout later. He still put on a show.”
After getting in trouble several times early in the fight, Adams proved to be tough to catch and even tougher to stop.
“I was coming up here to win,” Adams said. “I was coming to try to take him out in his hometown. He did what he was supposed to do, he’s a champ for a reason and I take my hat off to hm.
After the fight, Charlo gave Adams a hug during the post-fight press conference and complimented him on his toughness.
“He was tough, like he trained to take punches,” Charlo said. “He took some shots. He was strong. He had a chin. He’s a tough guy, I fought hard, but he made some great adjustments.”
Before the Showtime cameras turned on, Houston’s Miguel Flores put his career on the right track on the Charlo undercard.
Flores was so close to realizing his dream of fighting for a world title before a severe ankle injury took him out of his scheduled bout with Leo Santa Cruz for the featherweight belt in February.
The 26-year-old Houstonian took a big step toward re-earning that title shot after a sixth-round stoppage win over Luis May on Saturday.
On the televised portion of the undercard, Erickson Lubin finished Zakaria Attou when he forced Attou’s corner to throw in the towel in the fourth round. The 23-year-old Lubin (21-1), who lost to Jermell Charlo in 2017, dominated Attou from early in the fight but really capitalized when Attou suffered a bicep injury in the third round.
In a featherweight bout, Claudio Marrero (24-3) won a close decision over Eduardo Ramirez, which could set up a fight between Marrero and Flores.