Chavez Jr. vs. Celaya On February 9th

Undefeated light middleweight prospect Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (34-0, 27 KOs) will continue with incremental progress up the boxing ladder when he faces Mexican fighter Jose Celaya (31-3, 16 KOs) on February 9th at the Leon, in Guanajuato, Mexico. Celeya, 26, has built up an impressive record, but unfortunately most of the wins have come against soft opposition, the type with more losses than wins. As such, you can pretty much throw out his record, and judge him by his recent close wins over Juan Pablo Montes de Oca, an average fighter with a record of 9-11-2.

It’s not surprising that Chavez Jr. is facing a non-threatening fighter with an inflated record, considering how poor he looked in his last bout, a 6th round TKO over Ray Sanchez. That bout was even until Sanchez ran out of gas in the 5th round, and was eventually stopped in the next round.

Chavez, 21, has so far only showed rare glimpses of the talent of his famous father Julio Cesar Chavez possessed in his young career, struggling at times with the lower oppositions he’s faced thus far. Much taller than his 5′8″ father, the 6′0″ Chavez Jr. has made the mistake of trying to emulate his inside style, even though he doesn’t have the same kind of crushing power that his father had. As a result, Chavez Jr. has taken some serious punishment en route to his wins, getting hit often to the head in the process of getting his wins. He’s got a lot of work to do before he can ever be considered a contender, as he needs to learn how to utilize his height and try to fight on the outside more.

At this stage, he’s showed zero ability to fight at a distance, preferring to stay in close and trade on the inside. It works against the lowly opposition he’s faced, but as soon as he steps it up a level, he’ll lose badly. There was talk of Chavez facing former contender star Alfonzo Gomez, but that looks to have been put on the back burner for the time being, possibly because of how poor Chavez looked against Sanchez. Gomez may not be any of a champion, but he’d likely box circles around Chavez, very likely knocking him out.