Alief native retains WBC title
Charlo scores victory in return to Houston
Jun 30, 2019, 7:13 am
Photo courtesy of Showtime Sports
Jermall Charlo lands a right uppercut on Brandon Adams.
Jermall Charlo cruised to an easy victory Saturday night at NRG Arena in Houston, but the WBC middleweight champion could not score the knockout he was looking for. Charlo won a unanimous decision by scores of 120-108 (x2) and 119-109. SportsMap.com scored the bout 118-110 in favor of Charlo.
The Alief native looked like the bigger, stronger man from the opening bell. However Charlo (29-0, 21 KO) seemed to struggle with Adams' awkward style. Charlo consistently landed the harder, cleaner punches, but never seemed to hurt Adams (21-3, 13 KO,) who displayed an amazing chin in defeat.
The fight was a big step-up in competition for Adams, who went 12 rounds for the first time in his career. Adams looked completely overmatched at the beginning of the fight, seeming to be satisfied with merely surviving. As the fight went on Adams seemed to get more comfortable in the ring, working behind a loopy, range-finding jab to score some points despite losing most rounds.
"Of course I wanted to knock him out," Charlo said. "That's what we do. That's what we train for. I didn't get the knockout. My brother gave me and A though, so I'm happy with that."
Charlo was the main aggressor in the ring, leading Adams around and often pinning him in the corners. He was at his best when he could bully Adams into the corners and score points with body shots and uppercuts. Charlo said that he hurt his hand early in the fight, which could have been a reason for his performance.
"I've never fought with a hurt hand before. Ever. Adversity is everything," Charlo said.
After the fight Charlo talked about his desire to fight one of the big names of the middleweight division, specifically Canelo Alvarez.
"Canelo's gotta fight me sooner or later," Charlo said. "He cannot retire without fighting me."
Charlo, who is aligned with Showtime, is the only one of the four big players in the middleweight division that doesn't regularly fight on streaming service DAZN. Because of this Charlo has had difficulty getting the big fight he wants at 160 lbs.
The official attendance at NRG Arena was 6,408, announced as a sellout.
LUBIN ROLLS IN ELIMINATOR
Junior middleweight contender Erickson Lubin (21-1, 16 KO) earned a spot as the mandatory challenger for the WBC title in dismantling Zakaria Attou (29-7-2, 7 KO) via fourth a fourth round technical knockout. Lubin started the fight by feeling out Attou, who looked technically deficient compared to Lubin from the opening bell. By round two Lubin was landing flush left crosses that were pushing Attou back to the ropes.
In round four Lubin unleashed a flurry of punches that send Attou to the canvas. He beat the count and wanted to continue but his corner threw in the towel, stopping the fight. The victory means Lubin is in line to eventually face Tony Harrison for the WBC title.
MARRERO HANGS ON TO BEAT RAMIREZ
In the opening bout of the television card featherweight Claudio Marrero (24-3, 17 KO) started hot and did enough in the closing rounds to earn a unanimous decision victory over Eduardo Ramirez (22-2-3, 9 KO.) Judges scored the fight 115-113, 116-112 and 118-110, all in favor of Marrero. SportsMap.com scored the fight 115-113 for Marrero.
Marrero was the obvious aggressor early in the fight but Ramirez's grinding, inside style seemed to tire out Marrero as the fight wore on. Many rounds were close with both fighters trading many body-based combinations.
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They’ll be watching in Canada, not just because of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, though the NBA’s scoring champion and MVP favorite who plays for Oklahoma City surely helps lure in fans who are north of the border.
They’ll be watching from Serbia and Greece, the homelands of Denver star Nikola Jokic and Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Alperen Sengun will have them watching Houston games in the middle of the night in Turkey, too. Slovenian fans will be watching Luka Doncic and the Lakers play their playoff opener at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Los Angeles. Fans in Cameroon will be tuned in to see Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers. Defending champion Boston features, among others, Kristaps Porzingis of Latvia and Al Horford of the Dominican Republic.
Once again, the NBA playoffs are setting up to be a showcase for international stars.
In a season where the five statistical champions were from five different countries, an NBA first — Gilgeous-Alexander is Canadian, rebounding champion Domantas Sabonis of Sacramento is from Lithuania, blocked shots champion Victor Wembanyama of San Antonio is from France, steals champion Dyson Daniels of Atlanta is from Australia, and assists champion Trae Young of the Hawks is from the U.S. — the postseason will have plenty of international feel as well. Gilgeous-Alexander is in, while Sabonis and Daniels (along with Young, obviously) could join him if their teams get through the play-in tournament.
“We have a tremendous number of international players in this league,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this season. “It’s roughly 30% of our players representing, at least on opening day, 43 different countries, so there’s much more of a global sense around our teams.”
By the end of the season, it wound up being 44 different countries — at least in terms of countries where players who scored in the NBA this season were born. For the first time in NBA history, players from one country other than the U.S. combined to score more than 15,000 points; Canadian players scored 15,588 this season, led by Gilgeous-Alexander, the first scoring champion from that country.
Gilgeous-Alexander is favored to be MVP this season. It'll be either him or Jokic, which means it'll be a seventh consecutive year with an international MVP for the NBA. Antetokounmpo won twice, then Jokic won three of the next four, with Cameroon-born Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers winning two seasons ago.
“Shai is in the category of you do not stop him,” Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic said after a game between the Raptors and Thunder this season.
In other words, he's like a lot of other international guys now. Nobody truly stops Jokic, Antetokounmpo and Doncic either.
And this season brought another international first: Doncic finished atop the NBA's most popular jersey list, meaning NBAStore.com sold more of his jerseys than they did anyone else's. Sure, that was bolstered by Doncic changing jerseys midseason when he was traded by Dallas to the Los Angeles Lakers, but it still is significant.
The Slovenian star is the first international player to finish atop the most popular jerseys list — and the first player other than Stephen Curry or LeBron James to hold that spot in more than a decade, since soon-to-be-enshrined Basketball Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony did it when he was with New York in 2012-13.
“We’re so small, we have 2 million people. But really, our sport is amazing,” fellow Slovene Ajsa Sivka said when she was drafted by the WNBA's Chicago Sky on Monday night and asked about Doncic and other top Slovenian athletes. “No matter what sport, we have at least someone that’s great in it. I’m just really proud to be Slovenian.”
All this comes at a time where the NBA is more serious than perhaps ever before about growing its international footprint. Last month, FIBA — the sport's international governing body — and the NBA announced a plan to partner on a new European basketball league that has been taking shape for many years. The initial target calls for a 16-team league and it potentially could involve many of the biggest franchise names in Europe, such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City.
It was a season where four players topped 2,000 points in the NBA and three of them were international with Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokic and Antetokounmpo. Globally, time spent watching NBA League Pass was up 6% over last season. More people watched NBA games in France this season than ever before, even with Wembanyama missing the final two months. NBA-related social media views in Canada this season set records, and league metrics show more fans than ever were watching in the Asia-Pacific region — already a basketball hotbed — as well.
FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis said the numbers — which are clearly being fueled by the continued international growth — suggest the game is very strong right now.
“Looking around the world, and of course here in North America," Zagklis said, "the NBA is most popular and more commercially successful than ever.”