Jermell Charlo, Jaron Ennis, Tyson Fury, More

After the great fight between Jermell Charlo and Brian Castano, last weekend, i have a simple question for which I personally do not have any explanation. Usually, when a good fighter starts his boxing career, he meets a lesser opposition in order to learn and progress, before fighting a better quality of opponents. When such a good fighter has heavy hands, very often, his early percentage of kos is quite high and the said percentage often decreases when later on, he meets higher quality of fighters. We even have examples of fighters such as Keith Thurman who was winning by ko almost all his fights when he started his career (i think he had 20 wins and 19 kos when he started), and who then hardly beat anybody by ko anymore when he competed at much better level. With Jermell Charlo we have, I believe a quite unique case? Indeed he has 35 victories, and while he had won by ko only 10 of his 25 first fights (40 pct) against lesser opposition which is quite low, then 8 of his last 10 victories against good and sometimes very good level fighters were by ko (80 pct).I cannot remember any other fighter who has such a profile? Do you have other examples of fighters who became world champions and who increased their percentage of kos from 40 pct to 80 pct when they fought at the highest level of competition? And what would be your explanation why a fighter who had a small percentage of kos against lesser opposition, is becoming a killer when fighting at world championship level ?thanks in advance for your kind reply.

Chris from France

Bread’s Response: Great observation. Jermell Charlo’s ko % has definitely increased as he’s went up in competition. And usually the ko% goes DOWN as the competition level increases. I don’t know if we have seen a case a drastic as his. I do remember Ray Leonard’s ko % going up after he became welterweight champion. And I believe Nonito Donaire’s going up also. Leonard was 6-1 with 6kos in title fights after he retired in 1982 after he kod Bruce Finch.