Koen Mazoudier was supposed to fight an undefeated former champion on October 17. Now he gets a different former champion on 10 days’ notice, and the replacement is arguably the harder assignment.
Jose Armando Resendiz steps in for Jermall Charlo in a 10-round super middleweight bout at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. Charlo withdrew with a camp injury and no details were released.
Resendiz Is Not a Soft Landing
Resendiz is 27 and 16-3 with 11 knockouts. In May 2025 he won the WBA interim title by upsetting Caleb Plant on a split decision, a result almost nobody saw coming. He was elevated to full champion on January 1 and lost the belt to Jaime Munguia by unanimous decision in May.
So this is a fighter who beat Caleb Plant and went the distance with Munguia, taking a fight on a week and a half of notice. Short-notice opponents are usually a downgrade. This one is not.
The one thing working for Mazoudier is preparation. He has had a full camp. Resendiz has had 10 days, and super middleweight is not a division where you can skip conditioning and survive 10 rounds.
Mazoudier Has Been Building Toward Something
The 31-year-old from Blacktown, Australia is 16-4-1 with six knockouts and has won four straight since a ninth-round TKO loss to Nikita Tszyu in August 2024. His most recent win was a majority decision over Sam Beck on August 26.
Four straight wins and a title-adjacent opponent in Las Vegas is the step up a fighter in his position wants. Beating Resendiz means more on a résumé than beating a Charlo who has not fought in a long time anyway.
This is also the second time Mazoudier has had a Charlo fight fall apart. The two were originally scheduled for July on the Tszyu-Spence undercard before a visa issue ended it.
Charlo Remains a Question Mark
Charlo is 34-0 with 23 knockouts, which is a spotless record attached to a career that has been mostly inactive. Two cancellations against the same opponent in four months is a pattern, and no injury details have been released this time either.
At some point an undefeated record stops being an asset and starts being a thing a fighter is protecting. Charlo has not given anyone reason to think otherwise lately.
The Rest of the Card
Sebastian Fundora, 24-1-1 with 16 knockouts, defends the WBC junior middleweight title against unbeaten mandatory challenger Ermal Hadribeaj. Brandon Figueroa defends the WBA featherweight title against Tomoki Kameda. DAZN has the card on TNT.
Take Resendiz, short notice and all. A fighter who has shared a ring with Plant and Munguia in the last 18 months is operating at a level Mazoudier has not reached yet, and 10 days of notice matters less in a 10-round fight than 10 years of competition does.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.