|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
Is The Spoon Fed Chavez
Jr.
Ready To Be Weened?
History Will Tell You
No
Written By William Trillo Foto Folly: Bret "The Threat" Newton
With a record of 32-0-1 with 25 KO's, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. is now looking at the prospect of fighting former Champ Arturo Gatti by the end of the year and at a recent press conference his team is already hinting they want to go after Oscar De La Hoya after that.
Please!?
With all due respect to parties
concerned, Jr. has been spoon fed a host of tomato cans and
palookas that rival those proverbial Tijuana Taxi cab
drivers his Father allegedly fought 2 decades ago.
The excuse has always been that
because Jr. had no amateur career that this was a way to
bring him up through the ranks, which is a noble gesture if
true. But then I have to ask myself, how many guys with 30
something amateur fights start talking about fighting time
tested warriors like Gatti, much less The Golden Boy.
History tells us that bringing up a
fighter in this fashion is a recipe for disaster and unless
clearer thinking minds step up, we are about to witness the
same kind of fate for Chavez Jr. in the near future.
Our feature writer Johnny Ortiz told me
he witnessed first hand the same type of situation when he
was co-owner of The Main Street Gym in Los Angeles back in
the mid 80's.
Ortiz will tell you about a Super Bantam
by the name of Jaime Garza who was the pride of Los Angeles,
but truth be told, the undefeated Garza never fought anyone
of consequence before being thrust into a vacant title.
Garza's first defense of the vacant belt he picked up was
against a grizzled veteran from Mexico by the name of Juan
"Kid" Meza who had 46 fights on his ledger with about 37 of
them coming via KO.
A concerned Ortiz warned his handlers
not to go on with the fight, but blind to their own hype
they did not take heed to the words of wisdom.
On November 3rd, 1984 Garza climbed into
the ring to defend his belt and in less than 3 minutes "Kid"
Meza was walking out of the ring with the belt around his
waist. Garza was busy clearing cobwebs.
Garza was ruined. He never was in
another title fight and was KO'd in 5 of his last thirteen
bouts before he quit after back to back Knockout losses.
The moral of the story is you can't
spoon feed fighters a bunch of stiffs and then expect him to
perform on the big stage.
Even worse, once the fighter gets the
true reality check and gets pounded, it's hard for him to
ever regain the confidence he once had.
Coming off Jr.s victory over Grover
Wiley and the subsequent chatter from his camp that after
his next bout in August all roads lead to Arturo Gatti and
then Oscar De La Hoya, we couldn't help but make our weekly
poll center around Jr.
As Jr. is already staging himself for
the big fights without ever really facing anyone of
consequence, we asked how he would fare against his, ahem,
peers. Yes, we wanted to know if there was an undefeated top
147 prospect that Jr. could beat.
50% of our readers said no way, the
others were split as to whom he may overcome in a real test.
Of the 3 choices our readers thought
Mike Alvarado was the most likely to fall victim to Chavez
Jr.
I say, fair enough!
If I am not mistaken the Shelly Finkel
managed prospect Alvarado finds himself on a bevy of Top
Rank promoted cards so I am sure this would be an easy one
to make. Upon further review I see that Chicago date in
August for Jr. still has the ever popular TBA as his
opponent.
I make the motion for Top Rank to make
the fight between Chavez Jr. and Alvarado.
The truth is if Chavez does have what it
takes to get by a fighter like Alvarado it will be the best
thing that his handlers could do for him.
Can I get someone to second that motion?
Questions Or Comments? Email Will "The Thrill" Trillo |
||||||||||||||||||
