Chavez Looks to Right Wrong

Chavez Looks to Right Wrong
By Steve Kim (Oct 31, 2008) Photo © German Villasenor

At the end of the first fight between Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Matt Vanda in Hermosillo, Mexico, you heard something that you thought you never would: boos directed at a Chavez. And this was after a win. It was tantamount to sheer blasphemy. What's next? Coors Light becoming the favored beer of Mexico? Taco Bell becoming its most popular restaurant?

Junior himself was taken aback by the response to his split decision win (which was clouded by a judge giving every single frame to Chavez).

“At the end of the fight I was very surprised," he would admit, through Top Rank publicist Ricardo Jimenez, earlier this week in Los Angeles. "I saw all those people booing and everything and all I wanted to say was, 'What did I do wrong?' I felt that I won the fight. It was just a bad night, but some people didn't take it very well."

But perhaps the harsh reaction was a backlash to what they perceive is as a young man who is shirking his duties in living up to the Chavez legacy. The fans understand a fighter’s limitations; what they won’t accept is a boxer who doesn't do his due diligence in preparing for the fight.

To much is given, much is expected.

“I don't like to make excuses, but everyone knows I was sick," he says. “The day of the fight I had a fever, but I went ahead with the fight because I had enough to beat this guy early. It didn't turn out that way, it got complicated at the end, but let’s fight again and see what happens."

After building an early lead, he would fade badly down the stretch as Vanda turned up the heat with a steady barrage of punches.
"I went in there very well. Conditioning-wise, I was fine," he says. "And you can tell when a guy gets tired, when a guy is sick. I think if you look at me, some of the shots at the end of the fight, you know I was sick; I wasn't just tired, I was sick. I don't think I would've lasted the ten rounds if I didn't have the conditioning. I think it was just the sickness that got to me at the end."

Now, the cynics will say that like his father, he's already adept at coming up with post-fight alibis and excuses. But the proof is in the pudding, and a strong performance on Saturday night and much will be forgiven by his loyalists. But that titanic struggle he had over the summer is exactly the reason why Top Rank has moved him so slowly over 38 professional fights (where Junior has a mark of 37-0-1). At just 22, they will proceed with caution, and they will not let a network dictate how he is moved.

"They want him to fight above his head because they don't understand the boxing, where the kid is," says Bob Arum. "And we won’t allow that to happen."

According to the veteran promoter, he is progressing.
"He had no amateur fights and he's learning to be a fighter and he makes mistakes, like he did in his last fight with Vanda by going out too quickly and having nothing left at the end. He almost got knocked out in the last round."

The truth is, Top Rank knows what they have in Chavez Jr. - a limited prospect whose ceiling may not be all that high, but a young man whose name allows him to be marketable. And because of that, Top Rank has kept him busy (this will be his fifth outing in 11 months) against hand-picked opposition on small, yet profitable, pay-per-view shows that draw huge crowds below the border in cities like Leon and Queretaro.

Arum states flatly, "We're going to move him the way he deserved to be moved, without rushing, because obviously he's a good source of income."

But training issues do concern Top Rank.

"That's Fernando Beltran's job," Arum says of their co-promoter, "and Fernando has to make sure that the training gets better. But he says the training has been better for this fight. Who the hell knows."

The father of former WBO welterweight titlist Jose Luis Lopez has been brought in to oversee Chavez's pre-fight preparations, which seems to be an admission that something had gone askew in the first fight.

"We're ready for this," stated Chavez Jr. "If he couldn't knock me out when I was sick, with how I looked in the last two rounds, he's never going to knock me out."

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E-Mail Steve: k9kim@maxboxing.com

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