Arum will be sorry he matched Chavez Jr. against Sergio Martinez

By Boxing News - 07/27/2012 - Comments

Image: Arum will be sorry he matched Chavez Jr. against Sergio MartinezBy Dan Ambrose: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum recently came right out and admitted that he had been keeping his prize WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (46-0-1, 32 KO’s) well away from Sergio Martinez (49-2-2, 28 KO’s) in the past year for fear that Chavez Jr. wasn’t ready for the fight and would likely have been blown out in no time by the hard hitting southpaw Martinez.

Arum has had a change of mind after Chavez Jr’s has accumulated four wins over the following middleweights: Sebastian Zbik, Peter Manfredo Jr, Marco Antonio Rubio and Andy Lee. Those wins were enough to make Arum think that Chavez Jr. can not only compete with Sergio Martinez but also beat him. It’s sad that Arum is going to end up with a battered and beaten fighter on September 15th when Chavez Jr. is forced to officially taste defeat for the first time in his career. I say officially, because I think Chavez Jr. already should have at least three losses on his resume from his two fights with Carlos Molina, which I scored both for Molina, and Chavez Jr’s first fight against Matt Vanda in 2008 when Chavez Jr. received an incredibly controversial 10 round split decision victory.

The strange thing about that fight is that it took place in Sonora, Mexico, and even many of the Mexican fans booed the decision, believing that Vanda should have won. A lot of people have forgotten about Chavez Jr’s fights with Molina and Vanda, and assume that he’s breezed through his first 47 opponents with no problems. Wrong! Chavez Jr. had three fights where he appeared to lose and somehow was able to get two wins and a draw out of them.

The Martinez-Chavez Jr. fight will go pretty much the same way that Chavez Jr’s sparring session with Vanes Martiroyan went not too long ago. If you search for it on YouTube, you’ll see how Martirosyan was able to really pound Chavez Jr. with fast combinations both on the inside and outside in giving him a bad beating. The speed was the difference here. Martirosyan was just too quick, and he made sure that he threw nothing but combinations and stayed busy. The fighters that Chavez Jr. typically beats are guys that throw one punch at a time and get into wars where they trade shots with Chavez Jr.

If you fight like that, Chavez Jr. is going to wear you down with his 180+ pounds of weight. Having a cruiserweight tag you all night long is going to cause something to give. But the way to shut Chavez Jr. down completely is to unload on him with four, five and six punch combinations because he’s too slow to get a shot in between and he just covers up like a good sparring partner. Once Martinez finishes letting his shots go, all he has to do is move away so that Chavez Jr. can’t throw his slow body shots like he normally does.

Martinez is going to beat Chavez Jr. even worse than Martirosyan did. It’s going to be a really bad beating because he’s a bigger puncher and has better hand speed than the Mexican by far.

Arum is going to be wishing he’d never made this fight to begin with after Chavez Jr. gets knocked out.



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