By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (44-0-1, 31 KO’s) is supposed to be fighting Sergio Martinez, but Chavez Jr. was able to get out of the fight after asking WBC president Jose Suliaman permission to face No.1 ranked World Boxing Council contender Marco Antonio Rubio (53-5-1, 46 KO’s) on February 4th in San Antonio, Texas instead.

I thought it was pretty lame the way the WBC gave Chavez Jr. authorization to take the Rubio fight instead of the much more dangerous bout against Martinez, but I figured that Rubio is still good enough to give Chavez Jr. a good run for his money and maybe beat him. However, I’m not sure about that. Anytime Chavez Jr. and his people are hand-picking one of their opponents, it tells you that they see some vulnerability there that Chavez Jr. can exploit.

Sure enough, I took another look at Rubio’s biggest win of his career over untested middleweight contender David Lemieux from last April in 2011, and I couldn’t help but notice that Rubio was basically little more than a punching bag for Lemieux for the first five rounds of the fight. It was only after the weak-chinned and the poor stamina-plagued Lemieux ran out of gas in the 6th that Rubio was able to get into the fight and land some hard shots to initially knock him down and then take him out in the next round. Rubio didn’t look good and just seemed small for middleweight.

If you look at Rubio’s fight against a big middleweight in WBC/WBO champion Kelly Pavlik in February 2009, Rubio, 5’10”, was running the entire fight and just trying to survive. He didn’t have the size to compete with the 6’2 1/2” Pavlik and he was just trying not to get hit. In all the exchanges, Rubio was the weaker guy and he couldn’t handle it and had to run. Putting Rubio in with the 6’0” Chavez Jr. will be pretty much the same. Chavez Jr. will have too much size for Rubio and if Chavez can come into the fight weighing 175+, he’s going to be much too big for the slender Rubio.

I think this is another hand-picked opponent for Chavez Jr. to beat. Believe me, if Chavez Jr. and his people were concerned with Rubio in any way, they would have found a way to bypass this title defense just like they did with the Martinez fight. They’ve obviously spotted weakness in Rubio they think they can exploit.