Mayorga targeting Chavez Jr.

By Boxing News - 03/29/2011 - Comments

Image: Mayorga targeting Chavez Jr.By Jason Kim: Former two-division world champion Ricardo Mayorga (29-8-1, 23 KO’s) is praying that he can get a shot at unbeaten Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) next if the 25-year-old Chavez Jr. wins his bout against WBC middleweight paper champion Sebastian Zbik (30-0, 10 KO’s) on June 4th in Los Angeles, California.

While some boxing fans may laugh at the idea of Mayorga being able to get a shot against Chavez Jr. and fighting him for his paper title, it’s something that would have an excellent chance of actually happening. The reason why is pretty simple. Chavez Jr. is a badly flawed fighter and the WBC basically handed him the WBC title by making Zbik the champion rather than letting Chavez Jr. try and fight for it against Sergio Martinez, who the WBC stripped of the belt because he opted to fight Sergiy Dzinziruk recently.

Chavez Jr. would likely been beaten with ease by Martinez. He would also have huge problems against contenders like David Lemieux, Paul Williams, and Fernando Guerrero. I doubt that Chavez Jr’s promoter Bob Arum will want to see Chavez Jr. get taken apart by Lemieux or beaten by the likes of Williams and Guerrero. Instead, I can see Chavez Jr. getting a fight with the 38-year-old Mayorga, who Chavez Jr. can probably beat in a life and death type fight. Chavez Jr. could then be matched up with WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto in a nice in house Top Rank fight and be torn apart by Cotto. That’s the probably end game for Chavez Jr.

They need to put him in with Cotto as fast as possible for a cash out fight because if Chavez Jr. has to defend his title more than once, he’ll have to fight his mandatory and that’s not going to be a good thing because he’ll get trounced by Lemieux. The Mayorga fight will be a risky one for Chavez Jr. to be sure. But it’s a fight that he can definitely win if he comes in shape and throws some hard left hooks. Mayorga was stopped in the 12th round in his last fight against Cotto on March 12th, and is vulnerable to being knocked out. It’s going to be interesting to see if Chavez’s promoter has enough faith in him to put him in with someone like Mayorga.

My guess is they won’t want to take the risk and will either put Chavez Jr. in immediately for a cash out fight with Cotto or they’ll match him up with a bottom dweller contender in the middleweight division like Sam Soliman or Koji Sato. In other words, someone ranked low without any power or much of a chance to beat Chavez Jr. They’ll probably make it a pay-per-view bout, of course, and fans will have to pay somewhere along the lines of $40 to watch Chavez Jr. beat up on a lower ranked fighter before he’s eventually thrown in and ripped apart by Cotto.



Comments are closed.