Canelo vs Charlo announced Sep 16

In a major announcement today, Canelo Alvarez revealed that he has signed a deal with Premier Boxing Champions. According to a report from ESPN.com's Mike Coppinger, Canelo's next opponent will be Jermall Charlo, and the fight is likely to take place on September 16.

It had been widely expected that Canelo, who boasts a record of 59-2-2 with 39 KOs, would fight on September 16, although there were rumors that he might delay until October. With a deal at PBC now done, however, he has just under three months to prepare for his preferred return date on Mexican Independence Day.

The fight would see Canelo, who is 32 years old, defending his undisputed 168 lb championship against 33-year-old Charlo, who boasts a record of 32-0 with 22 KOs. Charlo has just passed two full years of inactivity, which makes this a particularly interesting matchup.

In addition to Charlo moving up from middleweight, this fight would likely see him finally vacating the WBC belt, which the sanctioning body has been very lenient about. It's worth noting that this matchup would be the second time in 2023 that we've revisited a contentious "WBC Franchise" bit from 2019, following Haney vs Lomachenko in May. However, Canelo vs Charlo would be in a different weight class from what happened with them a few years back.

Charlo was elevated from interim to full middleweight title status in 2019 when the WBC made Canelo its first-ever "Franchise champion." This was largely because Canelo had no intention of facing Charlo, just as Lomachenko had no intention of facing his mandatory, Haney, later that same year.

It's clear that boxing is returning to a heavy reliance on the pay-per-view model, and this would be a second huge PPV matchup for PBC before the summer is out, following Errol Spence Jr vs Terence Crawford on July 29.

The move from Canelo is a significant blow for Matchroom Boxing and DAZN, too, as Canelo has only fought once off of DAZN since signing with them in 2018. Matchroom has promoted six of Canelo's last seven fights, and without him for at least his next few fights, DAZN's star power cupboard is pretty bare. This is especially true with Ryan Garcia and Golden Boy now more at odds than ever before. It seems like Jake Paul vs Nate Diaz may have to do a lot of heavy lifting for them this summer.

Finally, it's worth noting that Canelo's deal with PBC is reportedly for three fights. This means that we can expect to see him back in the ring against top-level competition over the next few months and potentially even years. Boxing fans will undoubtedly be eagerly anticipating what's next for the sport's biggest star.

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