Light middleweight prospect Julio Cesar Chavez (33-0-1, 26 KOs) returns to the ring on Saturday night against perhaps his best opponent of his young career when he takes on Ray Sanchez (20-1, 15 KOs) at the Tingley Coliseum, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Chavez Jr., 21, is trying to follow in his famous father’s footsteps, Julio Cesar Chavez. However, Chavez Jr. still has a long ways to go if he wants to match even a portion of what his famous father accomplished, and there are many out there who feel that Chavez Jr. never will be close to being as good.
Part of the problem is that Chavez Jr. has copied the style of his father, who won six titles in three weight classes – super featherweight, lightweight and super lightweight – all smaller weight classes. Chavez senior did most of his work on the inside, pounding away on equally small fighters and pounding them into submission with his awesome power. However, Chavez Jr., for his part, is six-feet tall and fights in the junior middleweight class, and doesn’t have as big a punch as his father, meaning that Chavez Jr. has to grit it out against his opponents, trading shots as he tries to break them down with his mostly body-focused attacks.
Up to this point in his career, it’s worked for Chavez Jr. but he’s taken a lot of punishment in the process. Along the way, he appears to have received a gift decision and draw against Carlos Molina in 2005 and 2006, both of which appeared to be clear cut losses for Chavez Jr. The poor performances against Molina look even worse, however, when you see that Molina was beaten twice after his fights with Chavez. Since those two fights with Molina, Chavez Jr/ has been carefully matched, trying to keep him from the type of wars that Molina inflicted on Chavez Jr.
It’s been essentially easy sailing for him largely because of that, rather than any kind of improvement that can easily been seen by the naked eye. In selecting Ray Sanchez, Chavez Jr’s team has done their homework, realizing perhaps that the guy can’t fight near as good as his pumped up record would indicate. To be sure, Sanchez’s opponents have been almost purely class C fighters, many of which had losing records at the time he fought them. Chavez Jr’s camp has made a big fuss over the fact that Sanchez is a southpaw and has a good record, but come on, they can probably see that he isn’t the real deal and will be out of his league against the younger Chavez Jr.
Bob Arum, Chavez Jr.’s promoter, can see the problems ahead for him, just as I can, and wants Chavez Jr to change his style and make him more of a copy of Alexis Arguello, a tall 135 lb knockout artist. However, Chavez Jr. doesn’t begin to have the same kind of power as Arguello, so even if he did go ahead and follow Arum’s directions, he’d be throwing non-lethal right hands from the outside and would get picked apart by the faster, more powerful light middleweights, and sooner or later, middleweights out there.
For that, I don’t blame Chavez Jr. for wanting to stick to his father’s style, even though it will never bring him any kind of success in terms of him winning a major title. Eventually, when Chavez Jr. finally goes up against a talented light middleweight, he’s going to get beaten down. In fact, Chavez Jr’s destruction is already pretty much on course, as he’s scheduled to fight Alfonso Gomez, the reality television star from The Contender, in April. Gomez, who clearly isn’t a championship caliber fighter himself, is more than good enough to beat Chavez Jr., and likely will exactly that.