By Dan Ambrose: Tonight WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (46-0-1, 32 KO’s) has a good chance of being knocked out cold by the better conditioned Sergio Martinez (49-2-2, 28 KO’s) when they meet up at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. The indications are already there that Chavez Jr. is going to lose for the first official time in his career.

Chavez Jr. has got several questionable decisions on his record, so it’s hard to look at his resume and see it as a legitimate 46-0.

Martinez is a 2 to 1 favorite to win tonight by the betters, as they see how his power, speed and mobility make him incredibly hard to beat. But what makes this an even more ironclad win for Martinez is how much weight Chavez Jr. has had to take off for the fight. While most fighters tend to lose between 5 to 10 pounds when dehydrating to get down to their weight classes, Chavez Jr. has been routinely dropping 20 pounds and somehow still getting away with it. How he can lose that much weight in a short period of time without being weight drained is a mystery to me, because it just doesn’t seem possible that someone can do this consistently and still fight well.

Tonight I think it’s going to all come apart for Chavez Jr. with him getting badly knocked out when he makes the mistake of trying to walk through Martinez’s shots. You don’t do that with Martinez. That kind of primitive caveman fighting style doesn’t work against a huge puncher like Martinez. Can you imagine a fighter trying to walk through Julian Jackson’s shots? That’s what Chavez Jr. is going to be facing is huge power and with his nonexistent defense he’s going to be taken out fairly fast. I just hope he doesn’t get hurt in this fight.

So where does Chavez Jr. go after he loses this fight tonight? I think Chavez Jr. would be making a mistake if he decides to stick it out after middleweight after he gets knocked out tonight. The fact that he’s having to drop so much weight is an indication that his body can’t fight at middleweight. He needs to move up in weight, but he’s got to find a weight class where he competitive. Chavez Jr. doesn’t have the talent to fight super middleweight. Let’s be real about this. If he tries to move up to that weight class he’ll get schooled by the likes Andre Ward, Carl Froch, Mikkel Kessler and many other fighters at that weight, because he wouldn’t be able to use his size to beat them.

What Chavez Jr. needs to do is move up to the light heavyweight division to try and find his way at that weight. The talent pool is so thin at 175 that Chavez Jr. should be able to unseat one of the champions like Nathan Cleverly, Beibut Shumenov, Tavoris Cloud and Chad Dawson. He could even reign for sometime at that weight, because it’s just a really weak weight class. I think it would work out well for Chavez Jr. because by moving up to light heavyweight he’ll the division by making it more popular with the attention his fights bring to it. I think it’ll be a good for Chavez Jr.