By Eric Thomas: According to the latest boxing news, Freddie Roach, the trainer for unbeaten Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (41-0-1, 30 KO’s), thinks that Chavez Jr. will soon be the middleweight champion and thinks he can be a great fighter. Chavez Jr. is facing fringe junior middleweight contender Billy Lyell (22-8, 4 KO’s) on Saturday night at the Estadio Banorte, in Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico. The fight is a tune-up/stepping stone to the 24-year-old Chavez’s fight against WBC middleweight paper champion Sebastian Zbik in May.

That fight will be Chavez’s first title challenge, although it won’t mean much because Zbik was handed the WBC strap by the World Boxing Council after they pushed the previous champion Sergio Martinez into the Emeritus position, which cleared the way for Chavez Jr. to get the shot against the very, very beatable Zbik. The WBC did Chavez Jr. a big favor by doing this because he had virtually no chance of beating Martinez if they were to have fought.

Chavez Jr. would have his hands full with many of the top middleweights in the division, which is why it seems ludicrous that Roach sees Chavez Jr. as a future champion. In a sense, Roach is correct that Chavez Jr. will be a champion, but Roach failed to say what kind of champion he would be. If Chavez beats Zbik, Chavez will be the new paper champion, a fighter that carries a title with no real meaning because he doesn’t have the talent to beat Martinez and would likely also lose badly to other top middleweights Gennady Golovkin, Kelly Pavlik, Daniel Jacobs, David Lemieux, Dimitriy Pirog, Fernando Guerrero, Felix Sturm, Paul Williams, Sebastian Sylvester, Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam and Daniel Geale.

Chavez Jr. seems to be a lot like Roach’s other fighter Amir Khan, who currently holds the WBA light welterweight title, but isn’t considered to be the best fighter in the division and is another paper title holder.