Junior middleweight titleholder Jarrett Hurd takes some time to chat with Fight Hub TV about his upcoming title defense this Saturday and explains why he thinks a potential fight with Jermell Charlo won’t be as difficult as his unification fight with Erislandy Lara. Check out some excerpts below...
Hurd on this weekend’s opponent:
“I’m fighting someone from the UK, his name is Jason Welborn. He’s a tough fighter. He just won the British title and now he’s fighting for my two titles. And a guy with an opportunity like this, that comes outta nowhere, you know he’s coming to put on a great fight.”
On what we can expect to see from him in this outing:
“Everybody knows that I got the come-forward bully style. But this time we wanna switch it up a little bit, we wanna use a little bit more of our defense, use a little more of our range, and just let the world know that I have a different side of me than just to walk you down.”
On his rivalry with Jermell Charlo:
“Jermell Charlo, he’s a character, man [laughs]. That’s a fight everybody wants to see — that’s my Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight...It shouldn’t be hard to make. Like Fury and Wilder said, when two fighters wanna fight, it shouldn’t be hard to make. And we both want the fight so 2019 the fight should happen.
“...He knows wassup with me, we done ran into each other a couple times.”
On if he see flaws in Charlo’s game:
“Oh definitely, man. We see a lot of flaws, man, you know. He fights with a lot of emotion, man. I’ll just say that.
“That’s definitely a flaw. That’s definitely, definitely a flaw.”
On what he thought of Charlo’s last performance against Austin Trout:
“Like I said, man, he’s trying to out-do me. I feel like in his last performance, it was against Austin Trout, an opponent of mine who I stopped — was the first one to ever stop [him] — and I think he was trying to be the second one, which caused him to try a little too hard, load up on some of his punches and he ended up getting a majority decision with Austin Trout. And I feel like it was to out-do my performance.
“He’s also fighting a guy named Tony Harrison in his next fight which is somebody I also faced and I stopped him also. I think he learned from that Austin Trout fight, he’s not gonna try as hard this fight, so I think he’s gonna do much better.”
On if he thinks a fight against Charlo would be like his fight against Erislandy Lara:
“I think the Charlo fight is going to be easier than the Erislandy Lara fight. I think that Lara was the toughest opponent for me because of his Cuban background and his master boxing skills, and I think Jermell Charlo doesn’t have a style that I haven’t seen before. Lara being southpaw and so sharp in how he use the ring and his boxing IQ, and Jermell is a great fighter but it’s not nothing I haven’t seen before.”