Rubio needs to start fast against Chavez Jr. tonight

By Boxing News - 02/04/2012 - Comments

Image: Rubio needs to start fast against Chavez Jr. tonightBy Allen Fox: Challenger Marco Antonio Rubio (53-5-1, 46 KO’s) can’t afford to start slow tonight against WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (44-0-1, 31 KO’s) if he wants to win the fight and keep from getting bombed out from long range.

If you look at Chavez Jr. at the weigh-in on Friday, he looked completely drawn from having lost a ton of water weight to get down to the 160 pound limit. Chavez Jr. didn’t look well compared to Rubio, who only had to lose a few pounds from the low 160s he’ll be fighting tonight.

However, once Chavez Jr. rehydrates by putting the fluids back in his body, we’re likely to see him coming into the fight in the low 180s to as high as 190. That’ll give Chavez Jr. a weight advantage as much as 25 to 30 pounds. Rubio won’t last long against a fighter the size of Chavez Jr. if he plays the same rope-a-dope strategy that he used to beat the inexperienced Canadian David Lemieux last April.

That only worked because Lemieux was a small middleweight and terrible stamina. Chavez Jr. is as big as you can get for a middleweight and it won’t work for Rubio to try and wait him out. Rubio is more like a junior middleweight than a middleweight. He’s got a small frame and barely comes in over the 160 pound middleweight limit after he rehydrates.

That tells that he’s fighting in the wrong division. Rubio is obviously doing this because there are more opportunities for big money fights at middleweight than there is at junior middleweight right now. I think it’s always been that way. 154 is where guys go when they’re not good enough to hold down a title at 147 or 160.

Rubio needs to immediately jump on Chavez Jr. in the first round and start nailing him with right hands. Chavez’s trainer Freddie Roach will likely have given Chavez Jr. instructions to avoid going to war with Rubio early and instead look to box him. However, Chavez Jr. is one of those hot-heated fighters that fight with emotion rather than intelligence. He’ll ignore Roach and try and go toe-to-toe with Rubio, and that’ll be his mistake because Rubio’s game is built on slugging it out.

I think Chavez Jr. still might have way too much size for Rubio and could crush him in the first couple of rounds, but I think it’s still the best chance for Rubio to win this fight if he goes right after Chavez. He can’t let Chavez Jr. use his size to win over the long haul and he doesn’t have the stamina to last 12 rounds with someone as huge as Chavez.



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