by David P. Greisman

When Jermall Charlo changed the tenor of his fight with Julian Williams last month, the uppercut counter shot that did the trick was something he had been trying to set up all night — and something that his trainer had been working on for quite some time before then.

“When I study a guy, I look at what a guy does good and what he does not so good. I looked at a lot of Julian’s fights, and every time he throws a right hand, he falls in,” Ronnie Shields, Charlo’s trainer, told BoxingScene.com. “I saw that every fight that I watched. He did the same thing all the time. I’ve been working on that one shot for three months. Catch the right hand and throw the uppercut.

“If you look early in the fight, Jermall tried it a couple times and he missed because he was out of position,” Shields said. “The thing about that shot is you have to be willing to get hit to make that shot happen. The good thing is he caught it.”

Charlo worked to try to get Williams to come forward and throw the punch. It was a tit-for-tat fight between the junior middleweight titleholder and a top contender. Charlo kept trying to make Williams back up in order to then make him come forward.

“That shot is hard to catch when you got a guy on the ropes or when you’re on the ropes. You have to do it in the middle of the ring,” Shields said. “I was so happy that Julian’s trainer kept telling him get to the middle. I’m begging in my mind, ‘Please get to the middle.’ Back him up, so when you get close to him, he has to come to the middle, and when you throw the right hand, all you do is turn the shoulder and land that uppercut.”

It was a signature win for Charlo, who improved to 25-0 with 19 KOs and made quite a statement in what will be his final fight at 154.

“It’s great for us,” Shields said. “You have to fight the best guys in order to make a name for yourself in this sport. Jermall was always willing to fight the best guys. But everybody was high on Julian, which is great. Julian is really a good fighter. You can’t take anything away from Julian, because he knows how to fight. It was such a great move by Jermall. Now people realize this guy is something.”

Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com