By Dan Ambrose: Tickets for the April 18th fight between former WBC 160 pound belt holder Julio Cesar Chavez Jr (48-1-1, 32 KOs) and light heavyweight contender Andrzej Fonfara (26-3, 15 KOs) will go on Sale today for their fight on Showtime Championship Boxing at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
The fight won’t be for a title. It’ll be taking place at a catch-weight of 172 pounds.
Chavez Jr wanted to fight WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch, but the British fighter suffered an elbow injury and couldn’t take the fight this soon.
Chavez Jr has been talking about wanting to fight WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin.
Chavez Jr mentioned wanting to bet Golovkin $1 million that he’ll knock him out. However, it’s not likely that Chavez Jr will seek out that fight in 2015, because he seems to really want the Froch fight due to the British pay-per-view money that would be up for grabs in that match-up. But if Chavez Jr can get the Froch fight and defeat him, then it’s possible we could see a fight between Chavez Jr and Golovkin in 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZyfhoFo0pU
You can imagine that guys like Miguel Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will both come out of the woodwork to try and get a fight against Chavez Jr if/when he defeats Froch. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of those two fighters wind up facing Chavez Jr rather than Golovkin. But if Chavez Jr loses to Froch, then that pretty much takes away a lot of the interest in a Chavez Jr vs. Golovkin fight or Chavez Jr vs. Canelo or Cotto. Chavez Jr would be in the rebuilding stage of his career if Froch beats him, which is what a lot of fans expect to happen.
The Chavez Jr-Fonfara tickets are reasonably priced at $25, $50, $100, $150 and $200. It makes sense for the tickets to be cheap, because this is a fight that may prove to be difficult to move the tickets due to it not being a particularly exciting bout. Fonfara was recently beaten by WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson last May.
It doesn’t really make a lot of sense for Chavez Jr to be fighting a guy that was recently beaten. It is okay as far it being a tune-up, but it makes no sense if you’re hoping to sell a lot of tickets.
How do you get the boxing fans excited about seeing Chavez Jr fight a guy that was just beaten? Where’s the gain? The only thing that Chavez Jr can hopefully accomplish is beating Fonfara better than Stevenson did. That’s about it.
We still don’t know if the Chavez Jr vs. Fonfara fight will go through, because Chavez Jr’s former promoter Bob Arum has been making noises about him potentially stopping the fight due to his belief that Chavez Jr still owes him one more fight under his contract with Top Rank.
Chavez Jr needs to beat Fonfara in an impressive manner to show the casual boxing fans that he’s not the same slow-footed fighter that a past his prime Sergio Martinez easily beat in their fight in 2012.
The Chavez Jr vs. Fonfara fight will be televised on Showtime at 10:00 p.m. ET/7:00 p.m. PT.
Tickets for the Chavez Jr-Fonfara fight can be purchased online at AXS.com.
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