By Manuel Perez: Unbeaten light middleweight prospect Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (35-0-1, 28 KOs) continues on with his glacial move towards title contention when he takes on undefeated Italian Tobia Giuseppe Loriga (24-0-1, 6 KOs) in a scheduled 12-round bout for the WBC Continental Americas light middleweight title this Saturday night at the Plaza de Toros Juriquilla, in Queretaro, Queretaro, Mexico. Incredibly, the bout will be shown on PPV, costing $34.95 to watch despite what I consider to be a weak undercard of Hector Velazquez vs. Elio Rojas, Bernabe Conception vs. Torrence Danials and Hector Camacho Jr. vs. Kenny Kost.
For my part, none of these names on the card makes me feel inclined to want to fork over the $39.95 to see the fight, least of all Chavez Jr., 22, who has looked anything but a future champion at light middleweight. I don’t want to be hard on the guy, because he is, after all, still essentially fighting his amateur fights as a professional in that he never had an amateur boxing career. However, even for an amateur, I’ve yet to see any comparisons whatsoever with him and his famous father Julio Cesar Chavez Sr., who piled up many titles along with over 100 wins in his great career.
Chavez Jr. though, has looked quite average against his marginal opponents in recent fights, struggling mightily to stop Ray Sanchez in December 2007. Though Chavez Jr. eventually succeeded in stopping Sanchez in the 6th round to get the win, he was trailing in the fight at the time of the stoppage and looking as if the fight were in doubt for him. Chavez showed a tremendous flaw in that bout, one that I’d not seen before previously; namely, he had problems letting his hands go with any regularity. I’d seen a handful of Chavez’s previous fights, somewhere around six of them, and I hadn’t really noticed his lack of punch output in those fights. Looking back at it now, I realize why I hadn’t seemed to notice, which was because he had stopped them so quickly.
Against the soft 3rd tier opponents that Chavez had been force fed, he easily was able to knock them out within a round or two, often dropping them multiple times in the first two rounds. And, because of this, I had never taken notice to the fact that Chavez has a really crummy work rate, one of the worst I’ve seen since I’ve followed boxing. Thinking that maybe this was just an anomaly for Chavez Jr., something that he would quickly rectify in his next bout, I keenly watched his next fight, against Jose Celaya, and sure enough, Chavez Jr. looked just as bad, perhaps even worse, than he had against Sanchez.
Chavez still had major problems getting his punches off, as he would slowly stalk Celaya around the ring, yet not throw anything when he had him cornered. Being a Mexican fighter, Celaya wasn’t going to hesitate and wait around for Chavez, and before long Celaya was with great regularity pounding the tar out of the young Chavez. The only thing that Chavez Jr. had going for him in the fight was his power, which bailed out again and again, as he dropped Celaya early on and then once again before the fight was ultimately stopped in the 8th round.
Again, Chavez was losing the fight at the time of the stoppage and in danger of taking a real beating from Celaya, a fighter with only average power. However, it doesn’t take a lot of power necessarily to give a fighter a methodical beating, and Celaya was doing to a rather handy job of rearranging Chavez’s facial features. Going into the bout, I think everyone was expecting Chavez to easily beat Celaya, and were then, of course, shocked at seeing Chavez looking so amateurish as he absorbed a tremendous amount of punishment. Previously, before his bout with Sanchez, Chavez Jr. had been rumored to be fighting Alfonso Gomez, the star from The Contender reality television series.
However, for some strange reason which I can’t explain, Gomez’s name was no longer mentioned as an opponent for Chavez after the Sanchez bout. Seeing as how bad that Chavez performed against Sanchez, it came to no surprise that Gomez, a tough fighter that had not too long ago retired Arturo Gatti in a brutal beating, was no longer in the running for fight with Chavez. This Saturday’s fight with Loriga, a fighter with an unbeaten record over what appears to be almost exclusively soft opponents, appears to be a continuation of Chavez facing easy fodder for which he can look good against.
Don’t get confused by Loriga’s unbeaten record, he’s a 31 year-old fighter with little power, just the type that Chavez has traditionally done well against in his career. I suppose I can’t blame Chavez Jr.’s handlers for matching him against a beatable fighter like Loriga, being that Chavez has shown to have major flaws with his game. What I do have a problem with, however, is having to pay out $34.95 to watch him fight, especially considering he hasn’t won any major titles. That kind of money should only be for fighters with titles or top fighters that have previously won titles and are in the rebuilding stage of their careers, someone like Shane Mosely, for instance.
Chavez Jr. though, is only famous because of his father, not from having beaten any top fighters or from having won any major titles. Hence, I have a problem with this fight being pay per view. That said, I wouldn’t mind paying that kind of money if Chavez Jr. was fighting someone like Gomez, because that would be a guaranteed exciting fight. I doubt seriously that Chavez would win it, but it would still be interesting to see him struggling while taking a beating from the tough Gomez.