By Eric Thomas: Despite having shoulder surgery on his right shoulder, World Boxing Association junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (35-2, 28 KO’s) will still go ahead with his December 4th fight against the unproven Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (41-0-1, 30 KO’s) at a still to be determined location.

Cotto, 29, had minor surgery performed on his right shoulder early in August and is recovering quickly from the surgery. Cotto is expected to start training for the Chavez Jr. bout next month in September. It’s still unclear where the fight will take place. Bob Arum, the Top Rank promoter for both Cotto and Chavez Jr., has mentioned New York’s Madison Square Garden as a possible venue for the bout.

Given Cotto’s large fanbase in the New York area, it’s likely that Arum will opt to place this fight there rather than taking the risk of trying to put it in Texas at the Cowboy Stadium, in Arlington. Chavez Jr. isn’t a huge star in the East Coast and is known mainly as the son of famous boxing legend Julio Cesar Chavez.

However, Arum recently matched Chavez Jr. against one of his beatable fringe contenders, middleweight John Duddy, and Chavez Jr. looked good in beating Duddy by a lopsided 12 round decision. However, there’s a huge difference between a fighter like Duddy and quality guy like Cotto.

Chavez Jr. was stunned a couple of times by the light hitting Duddy. Cotto hits a lot harder than Duddy with every punch and if he gets Chavez in trouble, which is very likely, he will almost certainly finish him off. This is a win-win fight for Arum, because Cotto would likely get beaten if Arum were to match him against a quality junior middleweight like Alfredo Angulo or Paul Williams, but Chavez Jr. is a very winnable fight for Cotto.

And best of all, he fights for Top Rank, so the fight can stay in house for Arum. Chavez Jr. comes off well in defeat because Cotto is considered to be one of the top fighters in the sport in terms of popularity and it doesn’t look nearly as bad getting beaten by him compared to if Arum were to put Chavez Jr. in with a better quality fringe contender in the middleweight or junior middleweight divisions and Chavez Jr. was to get beaten.

Freddie Roach, the new trainer for Chavez Jr., thinks he can turn him into a really good fighter. He also thinks Chavez Jr. can beat Cotto. Will see if Roach is right about this, but he’s made some pretty big boasts in the past about some of his fighters and we’re still waiting on the results.

Cotto should be able to easily beat Chavez even with his shoulder coming off of surgery. Chavez is pretty basic, has very little defensive skills and tends to get hit a lot to the head. He’s going to have problems in this fight unless Roach teaches him a lot during his upcoming training camp.