By Jim Dower: Number # 1 ranked WBC junior middleweight contender Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (41-0-1, 30 KO’s) takes on fringe middleweight contender John Duddy (29-1, 18 KO’s) on June 26th at the Alamodome, in San Antonio, Texas. This will be the first time in Chavez’s career that he’ll have fought a 1st tier fighter, albeit a fringe one. Up to this time, the 24-year-old Chavez Jr. has been the king of the B level opposition, beating all but one of them during his seven year pro career.

Duddy, 30, technically is considered a top tier fighter, but he’s got a lot of flaws in his game and is a long ways away from some of the better fighters in his weight class. Chavez recently became a pupil of trainer Freddie Roach, who is working with him to try and develop his talent. Although Roach has worked miracles in developing a number of raw fighters during his career, he’s got his work cut out for him in trying to make Chavez Jr. into a future champion. There are a number of areas that Chavez is lacking in, starting with his stamina.

He’s been having problems making weight recently at 6’0”, Chavez might end up out-growing the light middleweight and middleweight divisions soon. But the real concern for Chavez is that he fades late in his fights and takes punishment. He was a way of turning what should be an easy fight for him into a grueling affair in the later rounds. With the careful match-making done for him, Chavez has been able to dominate most of his opponents early in the fight, but if he’s unable to score a knockout, he soon starts to take more and more punishment as the fight goes into the 8th, 9th and 10th rounds.

Chavez does have good power, but he’s not very fast and his lack of defense is a real problem for him. Roach is considered a really good trainer by many people, but he’s probably not going to be able to help Chavez too much with his conditioning problems and his lack of hand speed. The defense is an area that Roach could probably help him with, since Roach is good at teaching fighters how to block shots and keep out of trouble. But there are so many glaring deficiencies with Chavez that it’s going to take a minor miracle for Roach to teach him enough to be as good as his inflated ranking and record would have you believe.

Duddy has a lot of problems of his own, especially with his defensive issues. He likes to slug too much and doesn’t have the power or the defense to be really good at it. Duddy was nearly torn apart two years ago against a good B level fighter Walid Smichet in February 2008. Duddy was shaken up early, cut badly over both of his eyes and had to come on at the end to win a questionable 10 round majority decision. That fight cost Duddy a title shot against then WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik. Duddy won but he looked like a loser at the end of the fight with blood dripping all over his face from his cut above his eyes.

Duddy looks to be the better compared to Chavez right now. Chavez had a ton of problems with Matt Vanda in his two fights with him. Duddy looks to be a lot better than Vanda.