By Dan Ambrose: Former four division world champion Juan Manuel Marquez gives Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (50-2-1, 32 KOs) a slightly better chance against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 KOs) now that he’s being trained by Nacho Beristain, but he still sees the 26-year-old Canelo as having the advantage in the fight.
Marquez feels that there’s only so much a great trainer can do for a fighter that doesn’t train constantly. Marquez sees the change that someone like Beristain making in Chavez Jr’s style as something that will take time, and they only have this training camp to get ready for the huge fight against Canelo on May 6 on HBO pay-per-view from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. There’s not enough time.
“My forecast is still the same, but a little more reserved as far as he trained with Memo Heredia in his December fight and now the important issue is with Nacho Beristáin” said Marquez to ESPN Deportes, “He will help. He will make adjustments. It is a matter of time to change the style of boxing of JC Chavez Jr,” said Marquez.
Chavez Jr. has changing trainers so frequently over the years, and that obviously isn’t good either. Chavez Jr. has had some great trainers, but he’s constantly switching them out for some reason rather than sticking with one and learning from them. You have to wonder how long Chavez Jr. will stay with Beristain.
My guess is just this one fight against Canelo. If Chavez Jr. loses especially badly, which would seem likely given how infrequent he’s fought in the last five years, then I see him finding someone else to train him. I don’t think the problem is with Chavez Jr’s trainers. The problem is with him. He lacks the dedication to stay in top shape, and he fails to fight frequently enough. As slow as Chavez Jr. is, I don’t see him ever having any success in the 168lb division.
You need a little more speed in that division from what we’ve seen from Chavez Jr. When Chavez Jr. was at 160, he could get away with being a slower fighter due to his huge size. After he would melt down to 160 to make weight, he would rehydrate up in weight by huge amounts of weight and use his size to get an advantage over his smaller opponents.
If Chavez Jr. could somehow melt down to 160 each time he fights, he would be a problem for fighters like Daniel Jacobs and Billy Joe Saunders. I think Gennady Golovkin would be too powerful and highly skilled for Chavez Jr. to ever deal with, but he’s not going to be around forever. Chavez Jr. is still only 30-years-old. In theory, he should be able to last longer than Golovkin at this point, but you never know.
The way that Chavez Jr. has been fighting in the last five years, I don’t see him having more than a small handful of years left. He’s already no longer a relevant fighter. Chavez Jr. is pretty much just another James Kirkland type fighter that fights on an irregular basis, and is now finding himself as an opponent for Canelo to showcase his boxing skills and look good against while getting a payday. Chavez Jr. is in the same situation Kirkland was in when he was brought in to face Canelo in 2015 after having been inactive since 2013.
Beristain has trained a number of champions over the years, and he’s been able to develop some very good fighters. However, it took years for Beristain to turn these fighters into good ones. I don’t think Beristain is going to be able to do the same thing with Chavez Jr. in the time that they have to get ready for Canelo on May 6.
At this point, I’d be happy if Beristain can simply help Chavez Jr. make the 164 ½ pound catch-weight for the fight with Canelo, because Golden Boy has him in a bad position in getting him to agree to the weight limit. Chavez Jr. is so big now that it’s going to be very, very hard for him to make the 164.5lb limit for the fight without seriously weakening himself.
“Nacho has the experience,” said Marquez. “He has the maturity to be able to help Chavez Jr. a lot, but you can also have the best coaches, but if you are not a disciplined fighter, a fighter who is always training and at the foot of the barrel, they will not help you,” said Marquez.
Marquez is right about Beristain not being able to help Chavez Jr. if he’s not a dedicated fighter who is always training. The fact is that Chavez Jr. does not have a history of being the hardest trainer. There are some fights where he put in a lot of effort and looked great. Chavez Jr’s fight against John Duddy was one of his best. He looked well trained for that fight, and showed boxing skills that other fighters would die for. But that fight against Duddy was seven years ago in 2010.
That’s basically a career ago, because Chavez Jr. has not looked in great condition since that fight. In his very next fight against Billy Lyell in 2011, Chavez Jr. was heavy, slow and sluggish inside the ring despite making the weight. It’s unclear how much weight Chavez Jr. rehydrated for that fight, but he looked huge and not in the best condition. Beristain is a good trainer, but it’s going to be hard for him to roll back the many years in which Chavez Jr. hasn’t been in the best shape for his fights.
I don’t know that a trainer can undo years of slack training in one camp. I don’t think Chavez Jr. can get back to the fighter that he could have been. It’s like with Andre Ward, who stopped fighting on a frequent basis after 2011. He’s not the same fighter now compared to how he looked in the Super Six tournament, and all you do is look at the many years in which he wasn’t fighting frequently for whatever reason. Just because Ward has picked things up in the last year of his career to beat a very good fighter in Sergey Kovalev by a controversial decision, it doesn’t mean he’s going to be able to bring back the speed and the energy he had in 2011. I don’t think it’s possible.
Canelo still does have the advantage over Chavez Jr. The only positive for Chavez Jr. is the fact that Canelo is a flawed fighter that has put a lot of size in the last couple of years of his career, and he’s no longer listing his weight that he enters the ring with. Canelo is making weight somehow for his catch-weight fights at 155, but he’s clearly paying the price for the weight loss and weight gain with him having stamina problems inside the ring.
If you look at how Canelo needs to take frequent rest breaks against the ropes during his fights. That tells you that battles that Canelo is going through to make weight for his fights is leaving him without the energy to fight hard for three minutes of every round without needing to rest against the ropes.
If Chavez Jr. can push a fast pace and land enough hard body shots in the first six rounds of the fight, he could drain Canelo like a battery and leave him too weak in the second half of the fight to do much other than rest against the ropes. We saw that with Canelo in his fight against Austin Trout in 2013. Canelo rested with his back against the ropes the entire second half of the fight with him.