By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (46-0-1, 32 KO’s) is vowing to defeat Sergio Martinez (49-2-2, 28 KO’s) and shutting him up in the process when they meet at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada for their $49.99 pay per view bout on HBO.

Chavez Jr. said on his twitter account “Thanks for all your support. Viva Mexico! During the Independence day I will beat that trash talker [Martinez]. I will win.”

We’ll see about that. Martinez has a lot going for him in this fight in terms of power, speed, mobility and experience. Chavez Jr’s main advantages are his weight, youth and his popularity. The popularity might be enough to get him a decision win if it goes to the cards even if he gets soundly beaten. When you’re a popular fighter like Chavez Jr. is, decisions go your way. I’ve seen three of Chavez Jr’s fights against Carlos Molina [twice] and Matt Vanda where Chavez Jr. appeared to lose, and yet he was given a draw and two wins. That tells you that beating Chavez Jr. by a decision may be almost impossible to do unless knock him down over and over again.

Chavez Jr. is “training hard” he says and this would suggest that his knuckle problem affecting his right hand has healed. A couple of weeks ago Chavez Jr. was seen in training video with a badly swelled up middle knuckle on his right hand. Chavez Jr. was icing the hand trying to get the swelling to go down.

It looked really bad in how swollen up the knuckle was, and it’s hard to imagine that it healed up this fast. What was amusing about the workout was how Chavez Jr. had problems doing pushups. He looked out of shape, and his arms shook as if they were made of rubber while he was doing the pushups. He looked out of shape, and his strength trainer looked better than he did in doing pushups.