By Dan Ambrose: Despite looking flabby, slow, weak and entirely mediocre in beating a 2nd tier junior middleweight who much smaller than him, WBC Silver middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) brought in high ratings for his fight last weekend against the much smaller Billy Lyell (22-9, 4 KO’s) on Fox Deportes. Indeed, Chavez’s fight brought in nearly 400,000 viewers, which as it turned out was the highest in the history for the network.

Of course, Chavez Jr. is capitalizing on the fame of his famous father Julio Cesar Chavez, who chalked up more than 100 wins during his famous career. At the rate Chavez is going, he may reach 100 wins, too, albeit against B level opposition. Chavez is supposed step it up in his next fight against the WBC middleweight paper champion Sebastian Zbik (30-0, 10 KO’s) in May.

However, even if Chavez beats the slow and weak Zbik, it will hardly mean anything because Zbik was appointed as the champion by the WBC recently and didn’t have to actually fight anyone to get the paper title. The real test for Chavez Jr. is what will happen when/if he’s put in with good fighters like Sergio Martinez, David Lemieux or Kelly Pavlik, to name just a few. In looking at how truly mediocre Chavez looked against Lyell, he would do well to avoid these fighters for as long as possible because he doesn’t appear to have the ability to beat them.

Top Rank’s President, Todd duBoef, was quite pleased with Chavez’s high rankings for the Lyell fight, saying “This demonstrates Julio’s great popularity in the U.S and Mexico.” It’s nice that Chavez is bringing in high ratings but it won’t mean anything unless he actually fights someone other than B level fighters, which is pretty much all that Chavez Jr. has fought his entire career, and doesn’t dodge the best fighters. Will boxing fans still want to see Chavez fight after he starts getting beaten up by the likes of Lemieux, Pavlik and Martinez. My guess is no.