By Dan Ambrose: ESPN analyst Teddy Atlas is predicting a knockout win for former WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (49-2-2, 28 KO’s) on Saturday night against WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (46-0-1, 32 KO’s) in their grudge match on HBO pay per view at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Atlas, a former trainer, sees Martinez’s hand speed, foot speed, experience and boxing ability being way too much for the inexperienced and slower Chavez Jr. Atlas thinks that Martinez’s overall talent will negate the size, youth and the inside fighting skills that Chavez Jr’s possesses in this fight.

Atlas said “Martinez, yes, he’s older at 37-years-old against a younger Chavez he’s so much more experienced. He’s [Martinez] been in with so many better fighters and he has so many more options to use with the talent that he has. He can box a little bit, he can go in and out, he can fight in the trenches a little bit if he has to, he can counter punch. I think Chavez Jr. is a game guy. I give him a lot of credit. He’s come a long way, he’s matured. He’s become a lot better than a lot of people thought he was going to be, but he was well navigated. He was really well managed and he found a really good spot, an optimistic spot to become champion. I don’t know if he would be champion if he had to go in the same places where Martinez had to go. Some of the opposition that Martinez fought, I don’t know if he [Chavez Jr] could have beaten, and I doubt he would have beaten some of the opposition that Martinez beat. Chavez Jr. is a little too slow, too predictable, right down the middle. He’s not hard to hit; He likes to go to the body. He’s not going to get his way with Martinez. Martinez is going to knock him out late in the fight. He’s going to take him apart like a surgeon taking someone apart and just operates on them. I think he [Martinez] has quicker hands, better experience, confidence, everything, the whole package and his feet. Martinez uses his legs real well to get angles and to do his job.”

I completely agree with Atlas. Martinez is too fast for the slow-footed Chavez Jr. and I think it’s going to go badly for Chavez Jr. on Saturday. It’s kind of crazy that Chavez Jr. is stepping up in his 48th fight because I’ve never heard of a fighter with that many fights under his belt without having faced anyone really good. It kind of shows you how well managed Chavez Jr. has been to keep him away from the likes of Martinez, Kelly Pavlik, Paul Williams, and Gennady Golovkin all this time.