Chavez Jr challenges Hopkins to fight Golovkin on his Chavez Jr-Froch card

By Boxing News - 02/10/2015 - Comments

chavez300By Dan Ambrose: Former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr (48-1-1, 32 KOs) is challenging 50-year-old Bernard Hopkins (55-7-2, 32 KOs) to fight knockout artist Gennady Golovkin (31-0, 28 KOs) on his proposed fight against WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch this summer with the winner of those two fights facing each other.

Hopkins recently called Froch a fake on his Twitter account on Monday after Froch said he wasn’t interested in facing Hopkins due to the fight due to the criticism he’d receive from boxing fans if he were to lose to Hopkins.

In the process of Hopkins taking a shot at Froch, he said that Chavez Jr is “an easy choice.”

Chavez Jr might have been thinking of that comment when he came to the defense of Froch in an interview with ESPN.

“Hopkins I respect him for his achievements, but… I’d love to make a proposal; in my fight with Froch in the summer, we can do a tournament at 168 pounds. He [Hopkins] fights with Gennady Golovkin on the same card, and then the winners face each other, “said Chavez Jr said via Univision Desportes at http://deportes.univision.com/boxeo/article/2015-02-10/julio-cesar-chavez-jr-reto-a-bernard-hopkins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgZxdj-u5ac

Asking Hopkins to melt down to fight Golovkin is putting the 50-year-old Hopkins in the much tougher position than Chavez Jr, although facing Froch is no easy task for Chavez Jr. But for Hopkins, he’d have to come down from 175 to fight a small middleweight in Golovkin.

At best, Hopkins might be able to trim down seven pounds to fight at 168, but he’s not likely to go any further than that. In facing Golovkin, Chavez Jr would be dealing with a punching machine with punching power similar to Hopkins’ last opponent WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev. It would be a lot tougher for Hopkins because he would have to lose weight to fight a guy that throws more punches than Kovalev but with almost equal power.

What’s interesting about Chavez Jr telling Hopkins to fight Golovkin is that Chavez Jr had a chance to fight Golovkin, but he passed on that fight. Top Rank Promotions were looking to make the Chavez Jr-Golovkin fight, but Chavez Jr didn’t take the fight. In asking Hopkins to face Golovkin instead of him, Chavez Jr is basically asking Hopkins to do his dirty work for him.

Chavez Jr had his chance to fight Golovkin and he didn’t take the fight. So now how he’s asking Hopkins to take the Golovkin fight. That just looks really bad on Chavez Jr’s part. I don’t know if he’s aware of how that makes him look, but it definitely doesn’t make him look good. Imagine someone coming up to Chavez Jr and telling him to fight Golovkin. It would be like Chavez Jr volunteering for a loss if he were to take the fight. Would Chavez Jr, when he’s 50, agree to fight a younger knockout artist with a 7-year knockout streak? I think not.

YouTube video

Chavez Jr can’t speak for Froch, because the British fighter has shown zero interest in fighting Golovkin. So even if Chavez Jr told Hopkins that he should fight Golovkin with the winner facing the Chavez Jr-Froch winner, it still likely wouldn’t go down if Golovkin were to beat Hopkins and Froch beat Chavez Jr. The only thing Hopkins would get by fighting on Chavez Jr’s undercard is a likely knockout loss to Golovkin.

Chavez Jr is scheduled to fight light heavyweight contender Andrzej Fonfara (26-3, 15 KOs) on April 18th. There are more than a few boxing fans who think Chavez Jr is going to lose to Fonfara. If that happens, then Chavez Jr can forget all about his fight against Froch, because the fight will have lost what little meaning that it ever had. Froch is already taking enough heat from fans for facing Chavez Jr instead of James DeGale or Golovkin.



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