Despite a rib injury delaying an opportunity to win a shot at a middleweight world title, Hugo Centeno Jr. said his injury was actually a blessing in disguise.
Centeno Jr. said in an open workout in Los Angeles that he was initially disappointed when he had a rib injury in late February, shortly before his planned fight against Jermall Charlo at the Barclays Center on March 3. The winner of that fight would not only have won the interim WBC middleweight title, but also be in the short list of fighters set to challenge for the WBC title currently held by Gennady Golovkin.
"I was disappointed at first because I wanted this fight to happen so badly... I'm feeling great right now. The rib injury was somewhat a blessing in disguise. It gave me a training camp for my training camp. Once I came back from the injury I was already in great shape," Centeno Jr. said.
The fight was originally supposed to be the co-main event of the Deontay Wilder vs. Luis Ortiz WBC heavyweight title fight on March 3. Now the fight will still take place on April 21 at the Barclays Center and will now take place on the Showtime-televised card headlined by Adrien Broner vs. Jessie Vargas.
Centeno Jr. scored one of the biggest wins of his career in his last fight to set up this interim title fight, knocking out Immanuwel Aleem last August. Charlo, a former junior middleweight world champion, won a WBC title eliminator last year when he defeated Jorge Sebastian Heiland with a fourth-round TKO in Charlo's middleweight debut.
