By Dan Ambrose: A huge fight between Gennady Golovkin (29-0, 26 KO’s) and former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (48-2-1, 32 KO’s) is very likely to happen on July 12th, according to Steve Kim. He says that he’s hearing that the fight has a VERY good chance of taking place in July.
This is really good news, because we haven’t see Chavez Jr. face a good opponent since his loss to Sergio Martinez in 2012, and really that was the only tough opponent that Chavez Jr. has faced during his entire career other than his two fights against Carlos Molina earlier in their careers.
Golovin will be giving up a lot of weight to Chavez Jr. if they face each other in July, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Chavez Jr. out-weighs him by 20 pounds in this fight by the time they step foot in the ring.
Chavez Jr’s options at 168 are really tough ones, and that might be the reason why he’s still fighting middleweights. Chavez Jr. could fight Carl Froch or Andre Ward, but they’d beat him easily. He could fight WBC champion Sakio Bika, but there’s no win guaranteed in that fight either.
The Golovkin-Chavez Jr. would take place at super middleweight because Chavez Jr. can no longer get down to the 160lb division without totally starving himself to the point where he’s too weak to fight. You can expect that we’ll soon see Chaves Jr. grow out of the 168lb division as well, if he hasn’t already. He looked huge as a full grown cruiserweight in his recent win over middleweight Brian Vera on March 1st of this month.
What’s interesting about Chavez Jr. is that despite the fact that he’s moved up to the super middleweight division, we’re seeing him getting matched up against middleweights instead of super middleweights. It obviously gives Chavez Jr. an advantage for him to fight against middleweights in the super middleweight division. It’s kind of how Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fights against a lot of welterweights even though he’s fighting in the junior middleweight division, and he’s as big as a middleweight.
It gives Canelo a two division weight advantage against some welterweights.
Golovkin has been trying to get a big fight against one of the top middleweights in Sergio Martinez, Peter Quillin and Daniel Geale, but none of them has agreed to get in the ring with him. By the same token, Golovkin isn’t interested in moving up to the super middleweight division to face guys like Carl Froch and Andre Ward.
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