A very heavy looking Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (49-2-1, 32 KOs) put in an uneven performance in beating Marcos Reyes (33-3, 24 KOs) by a 10 round unanimous decision on Saturday night in Chavez Jr’s bounce back fight at the Don Haskins Center in El Paso, Texas. Chavez Jr. lost his last fight to Andrze Fonfara last April. But Chavez Jr. had nothing to fear tonight in dragging a weak-punching middleweight in 27-year-old Reyes up to super middleweight in order to enjoy a weight advantage.
Chavez Jr. was cut over his left eye in the 9th round from a clash of heads. After being cut, Chavez Jr. marched around the ring complaining about the head-butt until the referee took a cut and took a point away from Reyes. It looked very strange; as if the referee did this in response to Chavez Jr’s complaining rather than doing it based on what he felt was the right thing to do.
Having Chavez Jr. complain until the point was taken off made both him and the referee look bad. The point deduction really didn’t matter because the judges scored it wide by giving Chavez Jr. the victory by the scores of 97-92, 98-91, and 96-93.
Reyes landed a lot of punches in the fight, but he didn’t have the size to compete with the bigger Chavez Jr. Reyes was landing but the difference in power between him Chavez Jr. was pretty dramatic.
In most rounds, Chavez Jr. would slowly plod forward, missing shots and only putting out effort periodically. It looked like Chavez Jr. needed a lot of rest breaks in between his attacks.
Chavez Jr’s new trainer Robert Garcia didn’t do any better at improving Chavez Jr. than his last trainer Joe Goosen. There was no change at all in Chavez Jr’s performance level. The only difference was he was fighting a guy smaller than him rather than someone his own size in Fonfara.
This performance from Chavez Jr. was really disappointing. He didn’t show the kind of talent, work rate or movement that would suggest that he’s going to be able to compete against the top super middleweights when he eventually gets around to facing them. He hasn’t fought any of them yet. Chavez Jr. has been taking his time for the last couple of years building momentum to eventually start facing guys in the 168lb division. He’s going to have to do it eventually because he can’t keep pulling middleweights up in weight indefinitely.
Other action on the card:
McJoe Arroyo TD 10 Arthur Villanueva
Amir Imam KO 4 Fernando Angulo
Miguel Flores UD 8 Juan Ruiz
Min Wook Kim TKO 1 Luis Pelayo