By Jim Dower: Sometimes it pays off to be the son of a legend. In this case, it’s paid off handsomely for Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (36-0-1, 29 KOs)who finds himself ranked #4 in the WBC light middleweight division in spite of the fact that he’s faced almost no real live opponents during his short five year boxing career. This Saturday night, Chavez Jr. takes another small move up the career ladder with a fight against Matt Vanda (38-6, 21 KOs), a fighter with a high pressure, face forward style of fighting much the same as Chavez Jr. In Vanda’s case, however, he’s faced the better competition, which would perhaps explain why he’s got six defeats on his record and Chavez Jr. has none at this time.

I suppose most of his inflated ranking is based on the potential of what he will be rather than what he is now as a fighter, which based on the few average quality fighters that he’s faced, doesn’t appear to a championship caliber fighter at this point.

This could change, naturally, given his young age of 22, and the high quality training team that surrounds him. However, he’s going to have to change dramatically because from what I’ve seen of Chavez Jr., he looks more like a bottom 20 fighter than a top five, much less a future champion.

I don’t see any fighter in the top 15 that I think he could beat or even come close to beating for that matter. Just imagine putting Chavez Jr. in with someone like Ronald Hearns or Jamie Moore, both ranked #15 and #14 in the WBC at this time, and I see nothing but bad things happening to Chavez in either case.

That’s not his fault mind you, because he’s not the one that pushed himself against more capable fighters in the division. That was done by the WBC, who must see something that I haven’t seen in him. Certainly, his name doesn’t hurt ticket sales any, I imagine. However, at some point in the future he’s going to have to face a top fighter, and not the bottom feeders that he’s been put in with in his career, and when that happens we’re likely to see some bad things happening for him.

The worst case scenario would be go from a fighter like Vanda, who Chavez Jr. will likely destroy in a mutually punishing bout, to a championship bout against someone like Sergio Mora. It doesn’t take a genius to see that Chavez Jr. isn’t ready for a bout like this, and probably won’t be realistically ready for another four-five years, if ever.

Sure, you can throw him in there with him, or someone else like a James Kirkland or Aldredo Angulo, but then you’re just going to be a witness to his execution because he’s not in the class of any of those said fighters at this stage, and he hasn’t shown the promise of being in the class of any of them either.

As for Vanda, he not too long ago took on Sebastien Demers for his IBF International bout, and lost in a one-sided 12-round decision to the Canadian. Vanda looked good even in losing the fight, however, showing excellent power at times and even hurting Demers late in the bout. Unfortunately for Vanda, he wasn’t able to keep up with the high work rate of Demers, nor did he have anywhere near the same boxing skills as Demers, and was out-boxed for much of the bout. His power, and aggressive style of fighting is what made the fight interesting to watch.

He’s definitely a fighter that gets the most out of his limited ability, and really tries his best when in there. He’s likely to come right at Chavez Jr. and try to take his head off with every shot. That’s the danger for Chavez Jr., for he’s shown little ability to get out of the way of big shots, and if he stands directly in front of Vanda for 12 rounds, we may see a John Duddy-like beating, with Chavez’s face reduced to a bloody pulp. This is a fight in which Chavez Jr. will have to use a certain amount of boxing skills to win the fight, because if he tries to stand in front of Vanda for the entire fight, he’s going to be made to look bad.

I still think he’ll win regardless, don’t get me wrong, but he’ll take a lot of punishment from Vanda in the process of winning the fight. The thing of it is, Vanda’s a C-level fighter and shouldn’t have the skills to lay a glove on a fighter ranked as high as Chavez Jr. This is why it’s even more important that Chavez Jr. work as hard as he can on looking good in there, because even winning, he can still end up losing in the minds of boxing fans.