By: William Holmes
Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) Series was broadcast on the NBC Sports Network tonight from Houston, Texas at the NRG Arena. The main event featured a junior middleweight main event between highly ranked contender Jermell Charlo and former title holder and current past his prime former world champion Joachim Alcine.
The opening bout of the night was between Tony Harrison (21-1) and Cecil McCalla (20-2) in the super welterweight division.
Harrison was coming off the first loss of his professional career to Willie Nelson, but he had the age, height, and reach advantage coming into this fight.
Harrison and McCalla both fought out of an orthodox stance and Harrison was more active with his jab early on. He was able to wrap his hooks around the high guard of McCalla and sneak in some wide right hooks.
The second and third rounds were also in Harrison’s favor, as he was more active with his combinations while McCalla was wild and would only throw one punch at a time. Harrison’s punches were moving McCalla even when they hit his high guard in the fourth round, and he had thrown over three hundred punches by the end of the fifth.
McCalla has fallen far behind on the scorecards in the sixth round and Harrison was able to keep McCalla at bay with his sharp jabs and check left hooks.
Even though Harrison was known for his knockout power, it didn’t spear he was going for the stoppage in the second half of the fight. McCalla wasn’t cutting off the ring well, but did show some effective aggression in the ninth and tenth round by trapping Harrison near the corner and landing some hard straight right hands.
Harrison may have been hurt in the ninth round, but he won a wide decision with scores of 100-90, 98-92, and 98-92.
The main event of the night was between Jermell Charlo (26-0) and Joachim Alcine (35-7-2) in the super welterweight division.
Charlo looked to be in much better shape than Alcine and had a heavy jab early on in the first round. His best combination of the first round was a straight right left hook combination to the head of Alcine, but Alcine was taking Charlo’s shots well.
Charlo’s straight right was landing at a high rate in the second round and his combinations were on point in the third. It was obvious by the fourth round that Charlos’ reflexes were just way better than Acline’s and he may have hurt Alcine with a hard left hand.
Charlo focused his attack to the body of Alcine in the fifth round and landed a hard combination in the sixth round by the corner that sent Alcine to the mat. Alcine was able to get back to his feet and showed a willingness to exchange with Charlo, but Charlo’s punches were landing with more power and had Alcine staggered by the ropes. The referee jumped in to stop the fight at the same time Alcine’s corner tried to stop the fight.
Jermell Charlo remains undefeated with a TKO victory at 1:21 of the sixth round.
