Chavez-Duddy winner in line for Sergio Martinez

By Boxing News - 06/23/2010 - Comments

Image: Chavez-Duddy winner in line for Sergio MartinezPhoto credit: Rafael Soto/Top Rank – By Jim Dower: In an unlikely scenario, the winner of this Saturday’s fight between unbeaten Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (41-0-1, 30 KOs) and John Duddy (29-1, 20 KO’s) could be in position to challenge World Boxing Council middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (45-2-2, 24 KO’s) for his WBC belt. Chavez and Duddy will be fighting for the little known WBC Silver middleweight title when they got it on Saturday night at the Alamodome, in San Antonio, Texas.

However, it’s highly doubtful that their mutual promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank would want to throw the winner of the fight in with a skilled and highly talented fighter like Martinez. It would be almost too cruel, because neither Duddy nor Chavez Jr. are in the league of Martinez and would very likely get totally dominated and possibly even stopped.

Martinez doesn’t fight for Arum, so that makes it even less likely that the Duddy vs. Chavez Jr. winner will be fighting Martinez. Arum would like to put the Duddy-Chavez winner in with WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto, which would be about the same as putting Chavez or Duddy in with Martinez, only that Cotto fights for Arum and he would be able to put the fight on pay-per-view and put it in a stadium someplace.

After seven years of fighting B level fighters, Chavez Jr. is making a step up of sorts in fighting Duddy, a fringe contender in the middleweight division. It’s clearly a step up, but not a huge step up from the B level fighters that Chavez has been fighting. If Arum wanted to really test Chavez, he would look to put him in with middleweight contenders Gennady Golovkin, Daniel Jacobs, Paul Williams or Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam. Chavez would likely be in way over his head against any of those fighters; hence, the 14# WBO ranked Duddy has been selected for him. Chavez may just get by Duddy if he can keep the fight somewhat close and not run out of gas in the later rounds like he often tends to do nowadays.

However, beating Duddy is one thing, but beating any of the champions or top five contenders in the middleweight or junior middleweight division is probably out of Chavez’s grasp. This is kind of a weird fight. You know that Chavez Jr. and Duddy are badly flawed, yet both of them have impressive records at first glance. The only problem is that the large part of their resume is filled with 2nd tier fighters rather than top level guys.

This is why it seems like somehow not legit that one of them is going to likely get a title shot off this fight rather than working their way into a title shot the hard way by beating a top five contender and proving they have the talent to fight for a title. I’d like to see Chavez or Duddy beat someone like Antonio Margarito, Golovkin, Alfredo Angulo or Kermit Cintron before they get a title shot. Those are quality fighters, all of them. But to get a title shot based on Saturday’s fight seems hard to understand.



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