By Dan Ambrose: Making his second defense of his WBC middleweight title, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (45-0-1, 31 KO’s) retained his World Boxing Council title with a 12 round unanimous decision over the much lighter – and slower – Marco Antonio Rubio (53-6-1, 47 KO’s) at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas. The final judges’ scores were 118-110, 116-112, 115-113.

Using his considerable weight advantage, Chavez Jr. was able to pressure and rough up Rubio all night long, keeping him in a constant state retreat and battering him on the ropes. However, Chavez’s shots had no real effect on Rubio other than swelling up his eyes.

Chavez Jr. couldn’t stop Rubio and began to take a lot of hard shots in the second half of the fight. To his credit, Chavez Jr. responded well by meeting Rubio’s attacks and forcing the smaller Rubio to retreat with a mix of hooks, right hands and unfortunately quite a few elbows to the face.

Rubio attempted to go for a knockout in the 11th and 12th, but the weight advantage for Chavez Jr. was just too much for him and he couldn’t pull it off. Chavez Jr. looked to be at least 180lbs tonight, possibly even more than that.

In looking at the two fighters in the ring, it looked like a middleweight taking on a cruiserweight. Chavez Jr. has a really good thing going with his ability to lose incredible amounts of water weight to fight at 160. When he rehydrates, Chavez Jr. effectively a cruiserweight in with middleweights and that gives him a huge advantage. Chavez Jr. was asked if he is thinking about moving up in weight and he said no, he plans on staying at middleweight for a good while yet. Who can blame him?

If Chavez Jr. can get away with it then why mess with what’s working for him? As good as Chavez Jr. looked tonight, I still think he’d have been badly beaten had that been Sergio Martinez in the ring with him tonight rather than the painfully slow and small Rubio. This was the perfect opponent for Chavez Jr. tonight and he did well. But Martinez is a whole different matter and is probably a couple levels above Rubio in talent.

It would be a scary fight for Chavez Jr. to take as much as he got hit tonight. If that had been Martinez landing those shots, Chavez Jr. would have been in a world of hurt. Chavez’s promoter Bob Arum has been talking about putting him in with Martinez later in the ring towards the tail end. However, I don’t believe that for second. Unless the WBC forces the issue, I think Chavez Jr. will never face Martinez and even if the WBC does force the issue, Arum will have Chavez Jr vacate his title rather than take the Martinez fight and likely get knocked out badly.

I strongly disagree that Rubio deserved to be the #1 challenger. I think the WBC did Chavez Jr. a huge favor by agreeing to let Chavez Jr. bypass his fight against Martinez and by ranking Rubio above arguably more dangerous guys like Andy Lee, Matthew Macklin and Peter Quillin. I think those guys are better fighters than Rubio, and much faster with just as good, if not better, power. They also have more size than Rubio, although they’re not coming into their fights weighing close to 190 like Chavez Jr. That’s the only area where I would have doubts. Those guys can beat most middleweights but a cruiserweight-sized middleweight like Chavez Jr? I just don’t know. Chavez Jr. is damn lucky that boxing doesn’t have weigh-ins on the day of the fights because no way would he be able to put all that water weight back in his system in that much of hurry unless he was hooked up by an IV line to one of his veins. I think day of the fight weigh-ins is where boxing needs to go in order to prevent fighters from having a huge weight advantage over others when they’re able to rehydrate the way that Chavez Jr. does.