Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. embarrassingly quit in the 5th round on Friday night in a loss to Daniel Jacobs at the Talking Stick Resort Arena, in Phoenix. The reason for 33-year-old Chavez Jr. (51-4-1, 33 KOs) quitting was due to him having suffered a broken hand.
The way Chavez Jr. quit was similar to Andrew Golota in his 2nd round loss to Mike Tyson on October 20, 2000, and Victor Ortiz when he quit after the 6th round against Marcos Maidana on June 27, 2009.
Chavez Jr. looked mentally like he wasn’t into the fight after Jacobs started hitting him with hard shots in the 5th. He bloodied Chavez’s nose and cut him over his left eye. Before the 5th, Chavez Jr. had held his own in landing occasional big power shots to make the first 4 rounds close. Jacobs started coming on in the 4th round in landing jabs, but he was far from dominating.
He was supposed to make easy work of Chavez, but he fought scared after tasting his power in the 1st round. That’s the thing with Jacobs. When he gets hit hard by his opponents early, he goes into a shell, and fights defensively, and gives away a lot of early rounds. That’s why he lost to Gennadiy Golovkin, Canelo Alvarez and Dmitry Pirog.
Chavez Jr. might have been better off sticking it out until the bitter end, because the crowd was furious at him pulling a quit job. They booed him, and threw stuff into the ring. One of the DAZN commentators was nailed with a bottle.
Poor Jacobs (36-3, 30 KOs) probably didn’t know what he was getting himself into when he signed to fight Chavez Jr. If he had done his homework, he would steered away from fighting Chavez Jr., because he doesn’t perform when facing higher level opposition.
This was the 4th time in Chavez’s 16-year professional career where he’s fought poorly when facing a good opponent. These are the guys that Chavez Jr. has lost to during his career:
- Sergio Martinez
- Andrzej Fonfara
- Canelo Alvarez
- Daniel Jacobs
Those four happen to be the ONLY high quality fighters that Chavez Jr. has fought. The rest of the guys that Chavez has fought have been either 2nd tier level fighters or fringe level guys.
After the fight, Jacobs said that he wants Golovkin, Jermall Charlo, Callum Smith and Billy Joe Saunders. He feels he’s ready to fight all of those guys now. What’s clear is that Jacobs’ promoter Eddie Hearn needs to put him in with a good opponent for his next fight, because he’s going to hurt what little time he has left in his career if he keeps matching him against over-the-hill fighters like Chavez Jr.
