By Dan Ambrose: The World Boxing Council has given WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. approval to make a voluntary title defense on February 4th, likely against no.1 ranked WBC contender Marcos Antonio Rubio. This comes after Chavez Jr. reportedly asked the WBC for permission to take the voluntary defense.

Previously, the WBC mandated that Chavez Jr. is required to fight former WBC champion Sergio Martinez next unless he and Chavez Jr. can agree to let Chavez Jr. take a voluntary defense before they meet. WBC president Jose Sulaiman is said to have contacted Martinez to see if he was on board with Chavez Jr. being allowed to take the voluntary February 4th title defense and Martinez was agreement with it. Martinez will be defending his Diamond belt in March against Matthew Macklin.

News update: Another site is reporting that Martinez never agreed that Chavez Jr. can take the optional title defense in February. This could lead to a situation where it could come down to Sulaiman’s word against the teams’ word. If Sulaiman is saying he did make contact it’s going to be tough to prove him wrong. Whatever the case, it looks like Martinez is right back where he’s always been still waiting for a fight with Chavez Jr. I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar to this happens again. Martinez needs to give up on the idea of fighting Chavez Jr. and just look for someone that’s willing to fight him or at least deal with a sanctioning body that will force the champion to fight him.