Well, it appears that junior middleweight prospect Julio Cesar Chavez Jr’s bout with Contender star Alfonso Gomez is out the window, based on a report by Dan Rafael of ESPN, who said that Chavez’s promoter, Bob Arum of Top Rank, has had second thoughts about Chavez facing Gomez, apparently after seeing that Chavez, the son of boxing great Julio Cesar Chavez, is a huge draw and has decided that he should fight on pay per view instead. Even though Chavez Jr. isn’t a champion in any of the major divisions, Arum figures that he can make a lot of money because of the fact that Chavez Jr’s recent bout with Ray Sanchez sold a high number of subscriptions with little in the way of advertising for the bout.
Chavez is scheduled to fight on February 9th, against an unknown opponent. According to Rafael, possibly it could be middleweight Jose Celaya (31-3, 16 KOs), a soft-chinned fighter perfect for Chavez to look good against. That’s something that Chavez is badly in need of because he certainly looked average in stopping Sanchez in the 6th round on December 1st. Chavez looked slow, throwing very few punches per round and taking a lot head shots. If it was just this fight in which Chavez looked average, I might not care so much, but it’s all of his fights where he looked bad.
Chavez isn’t particularly fast nor does he throw a lot of punches. His power is rather limited, and he mainly gets by with his total dedication to body shots. Against the average opposition that he’s been is up until now, it hasn’t mattered much but if and when Chavez finally steps it up against a talented junior middleweight, he’s going to be in big trouble. Don’t expect that to happen anytime soon, however, as Chavez is reportedly going to be fighting six times a year until 2009, when he is then expected to start fighting top opposition. Good thing Arum saw the light and canceled Chavez’s bout with Alfonso Gomez, because he would have likely derailed him.
The fighter that I saw against Sanchez would lose relatively easy to Gomez, who is a legitimate challenger and would be a tough opponent for any of the junior middleweight champions. I don’t expect Chavez to ever have the talent that Gomez has, but that’s something that most of the boxing public will remain ignorant about until Chavez Jr is finally exposed by someone in 2009 or 2010. It’s only a matter of time, because sooner or later they’ll have to put him in against a top junior middleweight, and when that happens, Chavez is going to take a major beating.
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