Canelo Alvarez will fight Jermell Charlo on Sept. 30 in Las Vegas in battle of undisputed champions

Canelo Alvarez, the undisputed super middleweight champion, announced on June 22 he would return to defend his 168-pound belts in September, and speculation immediately arose that it would be against Jermall Charlo.

Alvarez will fight a Charlo, but rather than Jermall, he will face undisputed super welterweight champion Jermell Charlo, Jermall’s twin brother, on Sept. 30 on Showtime Pay-Per-View in Las Vegas. The bout will most likely be at T-Mobile Arena, though no deal has been finalized for a venue.

Stephen Espinoza, Showtime’s president of sports and event programming, said that though speculation was rampant that it would be Jermall fighting, Alvarez did not identify an opponent. It was determined Jermall wouldn’t be prepared to fight in time.

“At the end of the day, everyone understands Jermall has been dealing with some personal issues and the feeling is he couldn’t fully commit to a fight of this magnitude and be fully prepared and do all of the things he needed to do while balancing everything that is going on in his personal life,” Espinoza told Yahoo Sports.

Jermall holds a WBC middleweight title, but hasn’t fought since defeating Juan Macias Montiel on June 19, 2021, to raise his record to 32-0. He’s fought a division ahead of his brother for a while and he was the natural one of the two to move up.

But with his personal issues making it difficult for him to compete, his brother was a near-perfect alternative. The only issue is size. Jermell fights at super welterweight, which has a limit of 154 pounds. Alvarez is now a super middleweight, with a limit of 168. And he briefly held a light heavyweight title, which has a limit of 175 pounds.

Espinoza, though, doesn’t see the size disparity as that big of an issue.

“Not that long ago, both of them were at 154,” Espinoza said. “And Jermell has been talking about going to 160 for a while. You understand that Jermell is a very big 154-pounder. It will be a challenge, but he’s optimistic and believes he’ll be able to do it.”

Alvarez last fought at 154 on Sept. 17, 2016, when he stopped Liam Smith. Since then, he’s fought 13 times, going 12-1. He was at middleweight three times, light heavyweight twice and at super middleweight for eight bouts. He was 1-1 at light heavyweight, stopped Sergey Kovalev, and dropped a decision to Dmitriy Bivol. He was 3-0 at middleweight, with two wins over Gennadiy Golovkin and one over Daniel Jacobs. At super middleweight, he’s beaten Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Rocky Fielding, Callum Smith, Avni Yildirim, Billy Joe Saunders, Caleb Plant, Golovkin and John Ryder.

Charlo’s last two fights were for the undisputed super welterweight title against Brian Castaño. They fought to a split draw on July 17, 2021, and Charlo won the rematch by 10th-round knockout on May 14, 2022.

Alvarez has fought on Mexican Independence Day weekend 10 times in his career, but the UFC has a show at T-Mobile that night. Espinoza doesn’t think the new date of Sept. 30 will impact the pay-per-view’s success.

“It would have been nice to have been on that weekend, but it’s not as if Canelo loses his appeal if he fights on a different date,” Espinoza said. “That’s a traditional date for [star Mexican boxers], but Canelo is a brand and we’ve had success with him at different times. We did very well with him and Caleb Plant and that fight was in November.”

Alvarez defeated Plant on Nov. 6, 2021. It sold roughly 800,000 on pay-per-view.