Jermell Charlo appears to be suffering the fate of many undisputed champions - which is losing his titles one by one to mandatory defenses. Charlo who recently lost a one-sided fight to Canelo Alvarez that saw him get global backlash for the perceived lack of effort he put forth, has already lost his WBO junior middleweight world title as Tim Tszyu was promoted to full champion once the WBO stripped him.
Now the IBF is mandating Bakhram Murtazaliev as Charlo's next opponent, per Dan Rafael's reporting. The fighters have until November 9th to come to terms before a purse bid. Though for Murtazaliev's team, the odds of him fighting Charlo are probably pretty low given that Charlo stated he wanted 'money fights' after losing to Canelo. Bakhram Murtazaliev is a rather unknown fighter.
Bakhram Murtazaliev has been waiting since he defeated Jorge Fortea in November 2019 in a final eliminator to land his world title shot.
Murtazaliev has taken step aside money three times to accommodate Charlo's fights with Jeison Rosario and Brian Castano, showing flexibility in scheduling. However, it appears that Murtazaliev is now focused on landing his world title fight.
If for some reason, Charlo doesn't fight Murtazaliev the number-two contender is Jack Culcay, and one would suspect that those two fighters would face each other for the vacant IBF junior middleweight title.
Charlo has been extremely inactive over the past few years, fighting once-a-year dating back to 2020.
