By Dan Ambrose: Bad things can happen when you take a mediocre champion like WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr (43-0-1, 30 KO’s) and put him in with a guy that can punch like Ronald Hearns on September 17th.

This could be a big mistake on Chavez’s part because he seems to be in a big hurry to fight as often as he can but without the talent to easily dispatch his opposition.

His team has selected fringe contender Hearns thinking that this is someone that Chavez Jr. can defeat easily before taking on the supposedly tougher Peter Manfredo Jr. in November. To be sure, a good middleweight champion would make easy work of guys like Hearns and Manfredo.

However, Chavez isn’t a good middleweight champion. He’s what you call a paper champion and as we saw in his recent struggle to defeat the previous WBC paper champion Sebastian Zbik, who the World Boxing Council handed the WBC belt on a silver platter after stripping the best middleweight in the division Sergio Martinez, Chavez Jr. just lacks the talent to beat even the more average middleweight contenders without great struggle.

I think Hearns is a very average fighter, but he can punch with his right hand. That’s the one thing Hearns can do, and if you’ve got a guy with as poor defense as Chavez, it’s going to make things very easy for Hearns to tee off on him on September 17th.

I wouldn’t want to be Chavez Jr in this fight if he can’t take Hearns out early. The worst thing that can happen is if Chavez Jr. is unable to blast Hearns out. If it goes down like that, Chavez Jr. is going to take even more punishment than he did in his last fight against Zbik.