LAS VEGAS— Canelo Alvarez will take on undisputed light middleweight champion Jermell Charlo in Las Vegas on Sept. 30, the super middleweight champion announced on social media.
Alvarez, who currently holds all four belts in his division, posted a photograph of the pair on Twitter with the headline ‘Undisputed vs Undisputed’.
The Mexican, widely viewed as the leading pound-for-pound fighter in the world, last fought on May 6, when he outpointed English fighter John Ryder to record his 59th victory in 63 professional fights.
The announcement means Charlo’s anticipated clash with Australian Tim Tszyu will not happen ahead of a deadline imposed on the American by the World Boxing Organisation, leaving the American at risk of being stripped of that belt.
Charlo last fought in May 2022 when he recorded a 10th round knockout of Argentina’s Brian Castano in California.
Alvarez successfully defended his world titles against Britain’s John Ryder on May 6 this year.
The 32-year-old won by unanimous decision in front of more than 50,000 people in Guadalajara, Mexico, improving his overall record to 59-2-2.
Charlo, 33, is currently the undisputed super-welterweight champion, holding the WBO, IBF, WBA and WBC belts having won 35 of his 37 fights with just one loss back in 2018.
Alvarez had previously been linked with a clash against Jermell’s twin brother Jermall, who fights at middleweight level.
Elsewhere, Promoter Frank Warren has revealed that a potential undisputed fight between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk has fallen apart once again but has teased a ‘game-changing’ announcement.
Extensive talks took place between the two heavyweight champions at the start of the year over a unification bout in April only for the fight to spectacularly fall through, with both parties blaming each other for the breakdown.
There had been hopes WBC champion Fury would take on IBF, WBA and WBO king Usyk in a mouth-watering night of heavyweight boxing in Saudi Arabia in December, with the card also including a long-awaited showdown between Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder.
However, Warren now says that fight will not happen either, blaming a delay from the Saudi organisers, but has promised a new, eye-catching match-up for later this year that will be announced shortly.
‘I’m hoping we’ll have an announcement in the next week or so,’ Warren told talkSPORT on Thursday. ‘We’ve pretty much done what we want to be doing, but we’re not in a position to make the announcement. His fight’s done, we can’t hang around.
‘He will not be fighting on the Skill Challenge show in December [against Usyk] because they’re talking about their show now being postponed until January.
‘I think their head of boxing Amer Abdallah said they’ll probably be moving it to the first quarter of 2024, that’s up to them. Prince Khaled is a fantastic person, I really like him, but in the meantime we have to move on, we are going to announce something.’
He continued: ‘Tyson really wants to fight and we’ve gotta make it happen. We have to make things happen, we can’t wait for people to make things happen.
‘We tried to make it happen three times already this year with Usyk, contrary to all of the social media crap, he didn’t want it. If he’d have wanted it, the fight would’ve taken place.
‘What he wants to do is wait and he thinks he’s getting his $70million (£55m) in Saudi, and I understand that. I absolutely get that, but stop the nonsense that the fight’s not happening because of Tyson.’
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