Chavez Jr’s lack of speed will work against him in Martinez fight

By Boxing News - 08/17/2012 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: There’s only so far you can go by counting on being the heavier fighter in bouts time after time. WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr (46-0-1, 32 KO’s) has one asset going for him in his fights at middleweight and that’s by being able to come into his fight as basically a light heavyweight/cruiserweight and use that size advantage over natural middleweights to rough them up.

However, the size advantage for Chavez Jr. will go out the window against his next opponent Sergio Martinez (49-2-2, 28 KO’s) because he’s the first opponent that Chavez Jr. has fought in his career that has the ability to move around the ring.

If you look all the guys that Chavez Jr has been carefully matched against during his career, he’s always been put in with stationary guys that can’t move and who aren’t really big punchers and don’t have good hand speed.

On September 15th, Chavez Jr. will be facing a fighter that has all three of those assets going for him with Martinez. He’s got one punch power, he’s got lightning quick hands speed, and he can move around the to nullify Chavez Jr’s big weight advantage in this fight.

So in this case Chavez Jr’s huge weight will actually work against him because he won’t have a slow guy with his feet glued to the floor allowing him to crush him with his 15 to 20 pound weight advantage. Instead he’s going to be dealing with a fighter that is going to be using the whole ring to move around, hit and get out of the way of Chavez Jr’s main weapon – his body punches.

That’s Chavez Jr’s best offensive weapon his body punching and if Martinez takes it away from him by moving around the ring, Chavez Jr. won’t have anything to fall back on because he’s not fast and can’t beat Martinez by trading single shots from the outside.



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