By Allen Fox: WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (44-0-1, 31 KO’s) is expected to draw a huge crowd for his fight against Marco Antonio Rubio (53-5-1, 46 KO’s) at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas this Saturday night.

Lester Belford, the site coordinator, reports that already close 10,000 tickets has been sold for the fight, and they expect attendance figures to be between 12,000 and 15,000 on Saturday night, according to mysanantonio.com. Nonito Donaire will be fighting on the undercard against WIlfredo Vazquez Jr. for the vacant World Boxing Organization (WBO) super bantamweight title. Donaire and Vazquez Jr. are no doubt helping with selling tickets, but likely not by a huge amount.

Rubio, 31, will be Chavez’s big test to see if he really belongs at the top of the middleweight division. While few boxing fans see Chavez Jr. as being the best of the middleweights, he can at least prove that he deserves to be one of the four champions. Chavez’s problem was that he beat a champion – Sebastian Zbik – who was appointed as the WBC champion by the World Boxing Council after Sergio Martinez was stripped of his title for not facing his mandatory challenger Zbik.

Most people are understand that Zbik would have been demolished by Martinez had that fight taken place. Chavez Jr. turned around and squeaked by Zbik to win the WBC strap but he didn’t beat the guy that who everyone sees is the best in the division in Martinez, and Chavez Jr. and his promoter Bob Arum haven’t been in any real hurry to fight Martinez. This is why we’re seeing Chavez Jr. aimed at guys like Peter Manfredo Jr., Ronald Hearns and now Rubio.

The Rubio test is actually a fairly tough one. Rubio hits harder, has more experience and is an arguably more technical fighter than Chavez Jr. What Rubio, 5’10”, doesn’t have is size. He’s a medium-sized middleweight facing a huge middleweight in the 6’0” Chavez Jr. Having to fight a guy that will likely out-weigh him by 20 pounds this Saturday night could be too much for Rubio.

Picture Manny Pacquiao coming into a fight at 147lbs and facing Andre Ward at 168lbs, and that’s we’ve have with Chavez Jr. facing Rubio. If Chavez Jr. rehydrates to 180lbs on Saturday night, he’s going to have monstrous weight advantage over Rubio and with that size advantage he’ll likely be too strong for Rubio to handle.