Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. vs. Dominik Britsch in December

By Boxing News - 10/21/2016 - Comments

Julio Cesar Chavez Jr vs Marco Reyes

By Dan Ambrose: According to promoters Zanfer, former World Boxing Council middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (49-2-1, 32 KOs) will be fighting in December against #11 WBO super middleweight contender Dominik Britsch (32-2-1, 11 KOs) at a still to named venue. The date still hasn’t been confirmed as well.

”CONFIRM: Dominik Britsch vs @jcchavezjr1 in December,” said Zanfer on their Twitter.

It’s not surprising that Chavez Jr. is having a fight in December, because in the recent photos of him in raining, he looks to be in the best shape in years. Chavez Jr. has trimmed off a lot of the baby fat that he’s been carrying around in his last four fights.

The last time Chavez Jr. looked to be in really good shape was back in 2010 when he beat John Duddy by a 12 round unanimous decision to send him into retirement. That was by far the best Chavez Jr. has looked in his career in this writer’s opinion. Since then, Chavez Jr. has looked slightly heavy in his fights, and he’s battled in trying to make weight.

Chavez Jr’s best chance of success with the remaining time of his career would be for him to somehow belt back down to middleweight so that he could have a huge size advantage over his opponents. That’s what made Chavez Jr. so good during his prime years, as he was able to out-size his opponents after he would rehydrate. However, after melting down to 160 for his fight against Sergio Martinez in 2012, Chavez Jr. was unable to get back down to 160 after that. Chavez Jr. lost the fight to Martinez by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision despite knocking him down in the 12th round.

In Chavez Jr’s next fight, he weighed in at 172lbs in winning a controversial 10 round unanimous decision in 2013. A lot of boxing fans felt that Chavez Jr. deserves a loss in that fight. In his rematch against Vera in March 2014, Chavez Jr. weighed in at 167lbs, which was a good weight for him. He won by a 12 round unanimous decision and was better.

Things turned bad for Chavez Jr. in April of 2015 with him losing to light heavyweight contender Andrzej Fonfara by a 9th round stoppage. Chavez Jr. complained about Fonfara being too big for him. The reality is the two fighters were the same size. It just looked like Chavez Jr. wasn’t in the best of shape, and he wasn’t used to fighting someone as big as himn. Without his size advantage, Chavez Jr. was completely lost in that fight and it turned out to be a one-sided beating until Chavez Jr. quit in between rounds after the 9th.

The 30-year-old Chavez Jr. hasn’t fought in over a year since his less than impressive 10 round unanimous decision win over middleweight fringe contender Marcos Reyes in July 2015.

The fight was a close one for Chavez Jr., who suffered a hand injury in winning by the scores 97-92, 98-91 and 96-93. Of the three scores, the 96-93 was the more accurate one that told the story of the fight. The other two scores were from dreamland, because Chavez Jr. DID NOT dominate the smaller Reyes despite having a considerable size advantage over him in this mismatch.

You have to take any announcement news about Chavez Jr. with a certain amount of skepticism, because he’s been doing so much talking lately about wanting to fight Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. Until Chavez Jr. is actually inside the ring and throwing punches, I’m going to remain doubtful about him returning to the ring.

Britsch, 29, is technically a contender in the WBO’s top 15 rankings with him being ranked at #11. However, he’s never beaten anyone that you can call a good fighter during his 10-year pro career. It’s actually kind of embarrassing that the WBO has Britsch ranked in their top 15 at all, because he’s faced truly dreadful opposition his entire pro career.

At some point you would have thought that Britsch would have stepped in up against better opposition to show that he’s got the talent to make it at the upper rungs of the boxing world, but instead, he’s seemingly been content with fighting weaker opposition to pick up sure thing wins rather than taking on the top contenders in the division. The good news is Britsch is finally on the verge of stepping it up to fight Chavez Jr. The bad thing about the fight is that Britsch is fighting Chavez Jr. with him coming off of a near two-year layoff from the sport.

Britsch has lost two Soufiene Ouerghi (6-3) and Roberto Santos (25-9-3, 14 KOs). Britsch was stopped by the 34year-old Santos in the 8th round in 2012. In Britsch’s previous fight, he fought to a 12 round draw against Santos.

Britsch’s last 10 wins have come against these obscure fighters:

Slavisa Simeunovic (25-18, 22 KOs)

Aro Schwartz (11-2, 9 KOs)

Adnan Zilic (13-19, 13 KOs)

Suleyman Dag (10-82, 5 KOs)

Soufiene Ouerghi (10-4, 6 KOs)

Luis Crespo (4 KOs)

Billy Lyell (25-11, 5 KOs)

Steven Brendall (30-7, 16 KOs)

Ryan Davis (24-18-3, 9 KOs)

Delray Raines (19-13-2, 14 KOs)

If Chavez Jr. can’t beat Britsch, then he needs to seriously consider retirement, because there would be no place for him to go. Britsch isn’t a major player in the 168lb division, and he wouldn’t be a major player a 160 either if he moved down to that weight. Chavez Jr. needs to show that he can trounce this guy, because the good fighters in the 168lb division would likely have a field day if they were matched against the light hitting Britsch.

Perhaps the best move for Chavez Jr. would be for him to get in good shape, get three for four wins over some scrub opponents, and then look to get a cash out fight against the likes of Saul Canelo Alvarez or Gennady Golovkin. You can’t ask Chavez Jr. to move down in weight to the middleweight division to beat someone good, because I don’t think he can. Too much time has gone by with Chavez Jr. being outside of the ring, and his body is now more of a light heavyweight. You can’t artificially force your body to fight in a weight class it’s no longer designed to be fighting in.