By Dan Ambrose: The World Boxing Council (WBC) has made WBC Diamond middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (48-2-2, 27 KO’s) the mandatory challenger to WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (45-0-1, 31 KO’s), meaning that the young 25-year-old Chavez Jr. will have to face Martinez next, as long as Martinez wins his March 17th fight against Matthew Macklin.

The WBC said this in their site WBCboxing.com: “The World Boxing Council (WBC), headed by Jose Sulaiman, informed that the mandatory rival of the middleweight champion of the world, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., has to be Argentinian Sergio “Maravilla” Martinez. The Council informed that it won’t endorse a possible fight against Antonio Margarito due to the fact that the mandatory rival is “Maravilla.”

This is going to be interesting to see what Chavez Jr’s promoter Bob Arum does in reaction to this, because the WBC already made Martinez the mandatory challenger for Chavez Jr. before his last fight, and Arum and Chavez Jr. still went ahead anyway and fought Marco Antonio Rubio. Now the WBC is making Martinez the mandatory again.

What will they do if Arum decides to ignore this decree and go ahead and match Chavez Jr. with Margarito or Andy Lee anyway? I seriously doubt that Arum will go ahead and match Chavez Jr. with Martinez. I can’t see that happening and if the WBC forces the issue, Arum will probably have Chavez Jr. vacate the title and quickly go after one of the interim straps or one of the other champions.

It would probably have to be one of the interim titles because WBO champion Dmitry Pirog is too dangerous, WBA World super champion Felix Sturm is busy with a scheduled fight and would probably never fight Chavez Jr. in the first place. WBA champion Gennady Golovkin would fight Chavez Jr. in a second, but the problem for Chavez Jr. is that he would probably lose badly to Golovkin because he can punch with either hand.

More than likely, Arum will just ignore this order by the WBC and will go ahead and likely match Chavez Jr. against Top Rank fighter Margarito. The WBC will probably let this happen and it’ll just make the WBC look like a total joke in the process. Chavez Jr. brings in big ratings for HBO and Mexican television. He also is a huge gate attraction, as we just saw with the 14,000 fans that crowded into the Alamodome recently to see his fight against Rubio. The WBC probably won’t want to see this all end by forcing Chavez Jr. to fight Martinez and get knocked out. Chavez Jr. would stand no chance against Martinez and just by signing for the fight, Chavez Jr. would be signing to get beaten.