By Dan Ambrose: Last night, former WBC 160 pound champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr (48-1-1, 32 KOs) took a shot at WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (32-0, 29 KOs) on his Twitter account, saying that Golovkin wouldn’t be a good fighter if he didn’t have his punching power.
Chavez Jr also bet Golovkin $1 million that he’d get knocked out by him if he were to fight him at 168 after Chavez Jr takes care of his next opponent Andrzej Fonfara (26-3, 15 KOs) on April 18th.
In response to Chavez Jr’s fight offer, Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler said that they would gladly accept the bet, but that Chavez Jr needs to actually sign the contract this time. Last year, Golovkin and Chavez Jr were in negotiations for a fight that would have given Chavez Jr a career high payday. But instead of signing the contact, Chavez Jr moved on.
“@GGGBoxing accepts that bet, sign the contract this time,” Loeffler said on his Twitter.
The question is will Chavez Jr take the fight with Golovkin after the Fonfara fight or will Chavez Jr instead look to fight WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch.
If Chavez Jr decides to take the fight against Froch, then any chances of a Chavez Jr-Golovkin fight will likely disappear due to the high probability of Froch beating Chavez Jr.
That fight is not a good match-up for Chavez Jr due to Froch having better punching power, good size, and more than good enough boxing skills to beat the Mexican fighter.
Chavez Jr said this about Golovkin last Saturday night on his social media site:
”Without his power he’s not that good of a boxer, I’ll bet you GGG a million dollar of the purse that I’ll knock you out if we fight. But first, I need to beat Andrzej Fonfara and [he] is bigger and stronger [than Golovin]. Come to my weight class @GGGBoxing.”
Only Chavez Jr knows for sure whether he’s serious about wanting to fight Golovkin. I guess we’re going to find out soon after Chavez Jr gets done with the Fonfara fight. If Chavez Jr chooses to fight Froch next, then you have to assume that Chavez Jr wasn’t serious about wanting to fight Golovkin, and was merely saying his name to get attention from boxing fans.
One of the best ways for fighters to get attention is to name drop an important fighters’ name after they win a fight. So instead of the focus being on that fighter, it switches to a guy that is inactive and merely a spectator.
Chavez Jr hasn’t fought since last March when he beat middleweight journeyman Brian Vera in a fight that took place at super middleweight. That was Chavez Jr’s second consecutive fight against Vera. The question is why Chavez Jr is still fighting middleweights when he’s fighting at super middleweight.
Golovkin stopped Martin Murray (29-2-1, 12 KOs) in the 11th round last Saturday night at the Salle des Étoiles in Monte Carlo, Monaco. The fight was televised by HBO Championship Boxing. During the broadcast of the fight, the HBO commentators Jim Lampley, Roy Jones Jr and Max Kellerman were all saying how Golovkin reminded them of Julio Cesar Chavez, the father of Chavez Jr.
Instead of the HBO commentators saying Chavez Jr reminded them of Chavez, they were saying that Golovkin did. If Chavez Jr happened to have seen the HBO telecast of the fight, then he couldn’t have helped notice how Golovkin was being the one compared to Chavez Sr rather than himself. That probably didn’t feel too good for Chavez Jr, because he’s the son of Chavez Sr. But the reality is, Golovkin does fight more like Chavez Sr than Chavez Jr, especially with the way he hits so hard with each punch and how he records so many knockouts.
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