(Photo: Naoki Fakuda) By Dan Ambrose: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum likes his fighter WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr’s chances against 37-year-old Sergio Martinez (49-2-2, 28 KO’s) on September 15th. Arum admits to having doubts about whether Chavez Jr. was up to the task in the past, but he feels he’s more than ready to do the job on the much smaller Martinez now.

Interestingly enough, Arum confesses that he protected Chavez Jr. by keeping him away from Martinez in the past year, saying to the Nydailynews.com “Darn right he [Chavez Jr] was being protected, because he didn’t know a thing about fighting. We decided we wouldn’t make the fight until he was capable of beating [Martinez]. If we would have made the fight before now it would have been like leading the kid to the slaughter.”

Since last year, Chavez Jr. has beaten Andy Lee, Marco Antonio Rubio, Peter Manfredo Jr. and Sebastian Zbik. Those fights have given both Arum and Chavez Jr. a great deal of confidence.

Those were decent wins, but none of those guys had the power or the speed that Martinez has going for him. What Chavez Jr. accomplished against those guys has no bearing to what will be needed to beat Martinez. It’s apples and oranges. Chavez Jr. could be just as much out of his class on September 15th as he would have been had Arum made the fight last year, and I think Arum could be kidding himself if he thinks that Chavez Jr. has really improved all that much.

The only thing I can see that has changed with Chavez Jr. is his size. He’s much bigger now than he was when he was fighting guys like John Duddy and Troy Rowland. Coming into his fights weighing 180 pounds makes it harder to beat Chavez Jr. because hes so much bigger than his opponents. However, Martinez is someone that punches well above his weight, and he could very well negate Chavez Jr’s light heavyweight body on September 15th.

What Martinez brings to the table that’s different from the guys that Chavez Jr. has beaten recently is that he’s not another hand-picked opponent. Martinez can actually fight, and he’s not someone that will just stand in front of Chavez Jr. like the opponents that Arum picked out for Chavez Jr. in the past year. Martinez likes to hit and move away. This is going to be a problem for Chavez Jr. if he can’t cut off the ring.

It’s still not known how small the ring will be in this fight, but I suspect it will be the smallest allowable so that Chavez Jr. has an advantage in that area. Even in a small ring, Martinez is hard to nail down because he’s so quick especially with his combination punching.