By Jason Kim: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum would like to match number #1 WBC ranked junior middleweight contender Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (41-0-1, 30 KO’s) against WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto in the near future, if the 24-year-old Chavez looks good against middleweight fringe contender John Duddy (29-1, 18 KO’s) in their fight for the WBC Silver middleweight title on June 26th at the Alamodome, in San Antonio, Texas. Both fights seem like a long shot for Chavez Jr. to win, as he’s looked dreadful in four of his last fights against the B level opposition that he’s been put in with.

It would be a minor miracle if Chavez Jr. can beat Duddy, and that shows how badly Chavez has looked recently. He’s looked nothing like a top tier fighter, yet the WBC has him ranked number #1 in the junior middleweight division. Chavez Jr. is the son of the famous fighter Julio Cesar Chavez (107-6-2, 86 KO’s). The two fighters have next to nothing in common, though. Chavez Sr. was a very good fighter and fought much of his career at super featherweight, lightweight and light welterweight. Chavez Sr., 5’7”, fought against the best fighters in boxing and dominated for many years until late in his career when he began to struggle against the likes of Oscar De La Hoya, Pernell Whitaker, Frankie Randall, and Kostya Tszyu.

In contrast, Chavez Jr. is taller at 6’0”, and has fought exclusively B level opponents his entire seven-year pro career. Duddy will be a major step up for Chavez Jr., even though Duddy is considered a top 10 fighter in the middleweight division. It’s unclear whether Arum would put Chavez Jr. in with Cotto based on a win over Duddy. That could lead to Chavez getting totally massacred by Cotto, because Chavez still hasn’t shown that he belongs at the top in his recent fights.

Chavez Jr. now being trained by Freddie Roach at the Wildcard gym in Los Angeles, but he’s only been training with Roach for six weeks and that’s not very much time for Roach to make major changes. But we’ve seen that Roach doesn’t always have a perfect track record when he’s training someone that isn’t already hugely talented while walking in the door with him. Roach does well when he has talented fighters to begin with and does a lot less when dealing with fighters that are less talented.

Thus far, Chavez Jr. hasn’t shown the ingredients to be a major talent, but who knows what Roach can extract from his body. He could turn Chavez Jr. into another Manny Pacquiao or Amir Khan. But he’s got some major work ahead of him. Roach would like to have Chavez Jr. fight one more fight before being put into a title fight, but Chavez Jr. has to beat Duddy on the 26th or else all this won’t happen. The worse thing that could happen, besides Chavez Jr. getting destroyed by Duddy, would be for him to win a controversial decision. That’s always a risk when you have a much more popular fighter like Chavez Jr. facing a guy like Duddy in Texas.

Chavez, although from Mexico, will have a huge amount of fans at the fight, and he could look terrible and still win. If Arum then turns around and throws Chavez Jr. in with a guy like Cotto based on a controversial decision over a fringe contender like Duddy, I can see slaughter of epic proportions in that fight. But it would probably make a ton of money for Arum, Chavez Jr. and Cotto, but boxing fans would likely be let down because it probably won’t be a fight. Cotto is just far superior to Chavez Jr. and going from a fight against Duddy into a fight against Cotto is like going from elementary addition and subtraction to calculus all at once. Chavez will likely be hopelessly overmatched against Cotto. But the fight would make money, but I don’t know if it would be a good thing for boxing because it would likely not be competitive.