By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (44-0-1, 31 KO’s) is expected to ignore Sergio Martinez once again after Chavez Jr. gets through defending his belt for the second time against #1 ranked contender Marco Antonio Rubio (53-5-1, 46 KO’s) next month on February 4th in San Antonio, Texas.

Last month, the WBC ordered that Chavez Jr. defend his title against Martinez next. However, the WBC quickly caved in and agreed to let Chavez Jr. fight Rubio next instead of Martinez, even though the WBC ordered that Chavez take the fight with Martinez. Chavez’s promoter Bob Arum is talking about having Chavez Jr. fight one of his Top Rank fighters Miguel Cotto next if Chavez Jr. can get by Rubio next month.

Arum says that’s the more important fight for them and he doesn’t see Martinez as being a big enough draw. If the WBC fails to strip Chavez Jr. of his title at that time, it’s going to make a joke out of the sanctioning body. If they’re not going to enforce their own rules then what’s the point?

Martinez lost his WBC title last year when HBO turned down his title defense against number #1 challenger Sebastian Zbik. Martinez then took a fight with an HBO Sergiy Dzinziruk, and vacated the WBC title. Zbik was then given the vacant title by the World Boxing Council and defended it against Chavez Jr. in his first title defense. The weird thing is HBO agreed to show the Chavez-Zbik fight, but they didn’t want to show Martinez-Zbik.

Why they were okay with Chavez Jr. fighting Zbik is the big question. It seems like they should have said no to both Chavez Jr. and Martinez when it came to fighting Zbik, but whatever the case, it was a huge gift to Chavez Jr. because he would have never been able to beat Martinez to capture the title and he would have had problems against the other middleweight champions Felix Sturm, Gennady Golovkin and Dmitry Pirog because they can fight. Martinez hasn’t had any luck in getting Chavez Jr. to fight him and with the WBC failing to force Chavez Jr. to fight Martinez again, it’s essentially let Chavez Jr. pick and choose who he wants to defend his title against without any oversee by the WBC.

If Chavez Jr. can defeat Rubio next month, it will be very interesting to see what the WBC will do if Chavez Jr. and his promoter decide to go with the Cotto fight and skip Martinez again. Martinez already expects to be ignored by Chavez, so he’s not even counting on that fight happening even then. Will the WBC finally force Chavez Jr. to fight Martine? Will strip Chavez for failing to take that fight or will they continue to allow him to fight the guys he wants to fight?