Jermell Charlo stops Joachim Alcine in the sixth round to remain unbeaten
Jermell Charlo called it "The Rebirth."
The undefeated super welterweight, with a new trainer in his corner, wanted to knock out his opponent, Joachim Alcine, on Saturday night in front of his hometown Houston fans at the NRG Arena, and he did.
Charlo scored a sixth-round technical knockout against the 39-year-old Alcine in a scheduled 10-round Premier Boxing Champions fight on NBCSN to improve to 27-0 with 12 KOs. It was Charlo's first stoppage in more than two years.
He knocked Alcine down in the sixth round with a right uppercut. Soon after, following a flurry of punches by Charlo, referee Jon Schorle stopped it at 1:21 of the sixth round.
The "Iron Man"was deadly accurate with his punches and held a huge advantage in the punch stats, landing 122 of his 232 punches (47%) to just 22 of 157 (14%) for Alcine, the Haitian-born fighter now living in Canada. Charlo landed 67 power punches to Alcine's 19.
"We did it once again. The Rebirth. We back. Let's go," Charlo said afterwards. "The difference was, there's levels to this, and I'm at a different level than Alcine, even though he's older, he won titles before, it's a different generation. It's a different genre of boxing."
Charlo also credited his new trainer, Derrick James, for changing his style.
"I respect my former coach, Ronnie Shields, so much, but Derrick James came in and said, 'let's become a puncher as well as a boxer', " said Charlo, who opened a gym in Houston in March.
Charlo said of the right hand he used to drop Alcine: "That's the punch we talked about, the right hand, and just about every right hand we wanted to throw, we threw.
"I wanted to get the knockout. I haven't had a knockout in a while. The last time I was here, at NRG Arena, I got a knockout, too."
Charlo showed a big advantage in hand speed from the start, landing his right hands at will and he often caught Alcine with lightning-quick combinations.
Charlo said he wanted a crack at the WBC title at 154 pounds.
"Right now Floyd Mayweather holds the (WBC and WBO) titles and I'm ranked No. 1 (at 154 pounds). If Floyd doesn't want to get rid of the titles, there you go, I'm there. I'm not calling him out. I respect him, he did a great thing for boxing. But if you don't want to let go of the titles and if you're not completely retired, give me 154."
Asked if that means he was asking Mayweather for a fight, Charlo said, "Of course, we would love to fight Floyd. But I'm ranked No. 1 by the WBC. My brother (Jermall Charlo) has the IBF, (Erislandy) Lara has the WBA, and the WBO and WBC, I want it."
In the co-feature, Detroit's Tony Harrison rebounded from his first loss to defeat Cecil McCalla by unanimous decision in a 10-round super welterweight bout.
Harrison (22-1, 18 KOs) suffered his first career loss to Willie Nelson in July in Florida, but rebounded with an easy decision against McCalla, whose record fell to 20-3 (7 KOs). The three ringside judges scored it 98-92 twice and 100-90, a shutout.