By Jason Kim: WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (44-0-1, 31 KO’s) is looking to make his second title defense of his World Boxing Council belt on February 4th against either junior middleweight Vanes Martirosyan (31-0, 19 KOs) or Marcos Antonio Rubio (52-5-1, 45 KO’s) at the Alamodome, in San Antonio, Texas.

The Chavez Jr. card will also have WBC bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (27-1, 18 KO’s) fighting Wilfredo Vazquez (21-1, 18 KO’s). The fight card will be a double header on HBO.

Chavez Jr. likely won’t fight Rubio, because he can really punch and he’s a lot more experienced that Chavez Jr. is. It would be a very dangerous fight for Chavez Jr. to take, and it’s highly unlikely that his promoters at Top Rank will want to risk his unbeaten record against a slugger like Rubio. Martirosyan is even a long shot, although it’s clearly the easier fight of the two because Martirosyan isn’t a middleweight like Chavez and isn’t as rugged as Rubio. Martirosyan, who is trained by Freddie Roach, tends to move a lot and vary his attacks. He did give Chavez Jr. a real working over in a sparring session that ended up on youtube.

Chavez Jr. didn’t look at all good in taking pretty one-sided punishment from Martirosyan throughout the long sparring session. However, this was with large gloves and head gear. Chavez Jr. would likely do a lot better without head gear on against the leaner Martirosyan. Still, it would be a very risky fight for the young Chavez Jr. and I would be frankly surprised if Bob Arum, Chavez’s promoter, allowed him to be put in with a guy like Martirosyan or Rubio. Chavez Jr. has been put in with fairly soft opposition thus far. He did face Sebastian Zbik, the WBC paper champion, to pick up the belt last June but Zbik wasn’t appointed champion by the WBC rather than actually winning it in the ring against a human.

Donaire is looking for some bigger fights and to move up in weight. He defeated WBC/WBO bantamweight champion Fernando Montiel by a 2nd round knockout last February and followed that up with a 12 round unanimous decision over the smaller Omar Andres Narvaez last October. However, Donaire didn’t impress in that fight and it wasn’t a big enough name for anyone to really care about the win in the United States. Donaire needs a bigger name, and Vazquez serves that purpose in some ways. He’s not a huge name but he’s known among the hardcore fans of the sport. It would be help Donaire get ready for other super bantamweights so that he can move up and try and capture some titles at that weight class.