By Dan Ambrose World Boxing Council (WBC) “Silver” middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (41-0-1, 30 KO’s) will be defending his title against Alfonso Gomez )22-4-2, 11 kO’s) on December 4th, in Anaheim, California. What makes this match-up so disappointing, however, is that the 29-year-old Gomez will be moving up not one but two divisions to take on the much bigger 24-year-old Chavez Jr. for his Silver middleweight title. Gomez, 5’9″, has fought at welterweight his entire nine year pro career and asking him to move up two divisions to take on the 6′ foot Chavez Jr. doesn’t appear to be all that fair.

It’s great that Gomez is getting the payday and is willing to make the jump up in weight, but it doesn’t really mean as much as would be if they were both fighting at the same weight. Chavez already has a reputation of being a fighter that has been spoon fed soft opposition for basically all of his seven year pro career. Chavez’s record is filled with pretty much B level opposition. He recently beat fringe middleweight contender John Duddy, but this wasn’t such a big deal because Duddy had already been exposed by journeyman Walid Smichet and junior middleweight fringe contender Billy Lyell. Duddy beat Smichet, barely, but had his face badly cut up in a narrow 10 round majority decision victory.

Boxing fans were hoping that Chavez Jr. would finally take on someone that can actually fight in either in his own weight class or the junior middleweight division, like Miguel Cotto. However, Chavez Jr. instead will take on Gomez, a welterweight contender, on December 4th. There’s still hopes that Chavez Jr. will finally take on Cotto in early 2011. Chavez Jr. is ranked number #1 by the WBC middleweight sanctioning body, despite having fought largely B level fighters with the exception of the win over Duddy. Chavez’s last five opponents are as follows: Matt Vanda, Luciano Leonel Cuello, Jason Lehoullier, Troy Rowland and Duddy.

At this point, I wouldn’t give Chavez any chance of beating the top middleweights like Sergio Martinez, Felix Sturm, Gennady Golovkin, Paul Williams, Sebastian Sylvester, Daniel Jacobs, Dmitriy Pirog, Kelly Pavlik, Matthew Macklin, Giovanni Lorenzo, Daniel Geale, Sebastian Zbik, Domenico Spada or Enrique Ornelas. I see Chavez Jr. at the bottom 15 of the middleweight division right now and even that ranking is a little generous, because I think Andy Lee, Fernando Guerrero, Darren Barker, David Lemieux and Matt Korobov would likely beat Chavez Jr. as well. You can make a good argument that Chavez should be ranked around number #20 in the middleweight division, which is why it seems so odd that the WBC has him ranked at number #1 after beating B level fighters his entire career.