By Francisco Hernandez: Fighting in his home town of Culiacan, Sinaloa, Julio Cesar Chavez failed to impress his hometown fans which booed him after he was awarded a decision in his fight against Billy Lyell in the Banorte Stadium last night, January 29th, 2011. Mexican fans are not like other boxing fans, they expect more out of their fighters. Chavez appeared weak, slow, fought only in spurts, an all around flat performance by Chavez who could have lost the decision if the fight had been in Lyell’s home town.
Chavez junior is a likable kid, he has a big heart, and people really had hopes in his boxing future. At the beginning of his career Chavez junior looked motivated and hungry to achieve something in boxing, now it looks like Chavez junior has lost that motivation, he appears to be just going through the motions. It could be that Chavez has lost interest in boxing and is painfully trying to complete what he started. It is obvious that Chavez has not been able to progress much with Freddie Roach. Chavez is trying to fight from the outside more, trying to use his height advantage, but Chavez is not busy enough to make this work for him. Also Chavez is just too weak for the middleweight division, although he can do some damage with his punches, he doesn’t have a knockout punch. Chavez can gain some power by building up his body, but then he will end up in the super middleweight division or higher.
With ordinary boxing skills and no punching power, Chavez junior doesn’t have much of a chance to dominate the middleweight division. He can aspire to getting a paper championship, defend it once or twice against weak opposition and then retire to enjoy his wealth without receiving too much punishment. Chavez junior’s father, legend Julio Cesar Chavez, was strongly against junior going into boxing, he didn’t want his son getting hit, and he will be the first one to advise his son to get out of boxing.
I have often pointed out that Chavez junior’s boxing career was ruined when he was forcing himself to make weight at junior middleweight. Instead he should have strengthened himself physically and fought at his natural weight, this would have given him kayo power and speed. Now he is too weak to fight at any division. There is nothing Freddie Roach can do for him to remedy this. The best option for Chavez junior is to retire and enjoy his wealth with his beautiful girlfriend who was at ringside. He has no more business in boxing.
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