(Photo: Alma Montiel) By Jason Kim: With slightly less than two months to go before the September 15th fight between WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (46-0, 32 KO’s) and Sergio Martinez (49-2-2, 28 KO’s), there has already been over 13,000 tickets sold for the event, according to Eleconomista.com.mx for their fight on HBO pay-per-view at the Thomas & Mack Center, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The venue only holds 18,000 and it’s a given that it will be sold well before the 15th of September.

Chavez Jr’s promoter, Top Rank vice president Carl Moretti, told the eleconomista.com.mx “He’s [Chavez Jr] a new popular star with an identity for Latinos. It was very important for us in the fight against [Marco Antonio] Rubio, [Sebastian] Zbik and [Peter] Manfredo. [there are] two or three million people following his [Chavez Jr] fights. It is important in markets like Texas, Los Angeles.”

The 26-year-old Chavez Jr is benefiting from having a famous father, former boxing world champion Julio Cesar Chavez Sr., which has helped Chavez Jr. immensely by having a build in fan base without having to do much to attract fans the way normal fighters do. Chavez Jr. is becoming a cash cow for Top Rank, and could soon replace their number #1 money fighter Manny Pacquiao once he retires in two or three years. For that to happen Chavez Jr. will have to defeat Martinez on September 15th and continue to pick up wins against other contenders. If Chavez Jr. can beat Martinez he will have pretty much exhausted most of the competition in the middleweight division. The only fighters that will stand in his way from that point will be Dmitry Pirog, Felix Sturm, Peter Quillin, and Gennady Golovkin. The chances of Chavez Jr. fighting any of them are quite low, however.

What we could see is Chavez Jr’s career slowing down after the Martinez fight with Chavez Jr. fighting the lesser names that the WBC has ranked in their top 15. The only way Chavez Jr. will continue to get big fights is when he eventually is forced to move up to super middleweight when he can no longer make 160, which could happen very soon by looking at how Chavez Jr. continues to fill out and balloon up between fights.