By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (45-0-1, 31 KO’s) could be making his next defense of his title against junior middleweight contender Vanes Martirosyan (32-0, 20 KO’s) on June 16th. This comes after Chavez Jr’s planned opponent undefeated Martin Murray (23-0-1, 10 KO’s) ran into some visa problems that won’t be cleared up by the fight date in June.

Dan Rafael said this on his twitter “Been told with Murray out vs. Chavez Jr that Top Rank will try to make the fight with Vanes Martirosyan for June 16th on HBO Boxing.”

Martirosyan responded on his twitter page, saying “I’m ready to fight anybody. I told Top Rank I want big names and if Chavez really wants to fight me and it’s not all talk, I’ll fight him today.”

The only question here is whether the World Boxing Council will sanction the fight given that Martirosyan has no ranking in the middleweight division and there are arguably much more deserving middleweight contenders who would be skipped over if Chavez Jr. goes ahead and takes the fight with the 25-year-old Martirosyan.

A fight between Martirosyan and Chavez Jr. is obviously an easy fight and an appealing one to make, because both guys are with Top Rank, so this would be yet another in house fight for Top Rank with both guys being under their control. There won’t be any danger of the WBC title escaping if Martirosyan beats Chavez Jr., because even if he did beat him, he’d still be their guy and we’d no doubt see a rematch between them. What makes a Chavez Jr.-Martirosyan fight slightly difficult is that both guys are trained by Freddie Roach, which would put him in the position to where he would have to pick the guy he wants to train. It’s pretty obvious that Roach would choose Chavez Jr., the big money guy to trainer rather than Martirosyan, who may never make the kind of money that Chavez Jr. is making largely due to his famous father Julio Cesar Chavez Sr’s name recognition passed down to his son. I can’t see Roach choosing Martirosyan, even though he’s probably the better overall fighter of the two. In watching video of a sparring session between Martirosyan and Chavez Jr. last year, Martirosyan was seen really working Chavez Jr. over and giving him all kinds of problems in both and inside and outside war. Martirosyan was just a lot better. However, that was sparring and who knows what Chavez Jr. would do if he came into the ring weighing 180+ against the 154 pound Martirosyan.

With Chavez Jr. and his promoter Bob Arum apparently still not ready to face former WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez, the options for Chavez Jr. at middleweight are looking mighty slim if he wants his next fight to be televised on HBO. There’s southpaw Andy Lee, who probably is too dangerous for Chavez Jr. Once you get past Martinez and Lee, there’s just no one available that’s worth televising Chavez Jr. against. He already beat Peter Manfredo Jr., Sebastian Zbik and Marco Antonio Rubio. There’s Jermain Taylor, but he’s not ready for a title fight yet and even if he was, I can’t see Arum allowing Chavez Jr. to fight him. Taylor is too dangerous for Chavez Jr. because he actually can fight. The rest of the WBC ranked top 15 contenders are guys that Chavez Jr. would likely beat with no problem.