(Photo credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea/SHOWTIME) #5 WBC, #10 WBA super middleweight contender Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (48-2-1, 32 KOs) will be attempting to revive his career this Saturday night in a 10 round bout against Marcos Reyes (33-2, 24 KOs) on Showtime from the Don Haskins Center in El Paso, Texas. This fight is very important for Chavez Jr. because he lost his last fight in April to Andrzej Fonfara by a 9th round knockout, and he can ill afford to lose another fight.
Chavez Jr. was supposed to win that fight in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans, but he wasn’t even competitive with the Polish light heavyweight. It was a slaughter from the word go. Chavez Jr. later blamed the loss on his poor conditioning and Fonfara being too big and strong for him, but it seemed more of a case of Chavez Jr. not having the right skills for the job.
He tried to fight the big punching Fonfara in close, which was asking for trouble. Chavez Jr. says he now wants to start using his size to fight on the outside more so that he doesn’t get hit as much, but it remains to be seen whether the 29-year-old Chavez Jr. can change his fighting style overnight. He’s been using the same style as his famous father Julio Cesar Chavez since the beginning of his career, and it won’t be easy for him to change the style now that he’s been a pro for 12 years.
“I feel like I need to have a dominant performance to show my fans what I am capable of,” Chavez said via the Miamiherald.com. “I learned a lot in my fight against Fonfara. I really felt his punches. I became very tired. He taught me that I needed to spend more time in the gym and on my strategy. But I don’t think it was the wrong decision to fight him.”
Oddly enough, Chavez Jr. feels that it was a gift for him to fight Fonfara because the loss taught him that he needs to be more serious about his training and he needs to take his career more seriously. He says that if he beat Fonfara, he would have continued to not train for his fights as hard as he should be training.
After Chavez Jr’s loss to Fonfara, he switched trainers from Joe Goosen to Robert Garcia, and now trains in Oxnard, California. Garcia has been pretty pleased with Chavez Jr., saying that he’s only missed one day of training camp. Garcia says Chavez Hr. is putting out maximum effort to get ready for this fight against the 27-year-old Reyes.
“I think Robert Garcia was the best option for me after my last fight,” Chavez said. “He speaks Spanish and knows the Mexican style. He has trained a lot of champions, and I have a good connection with him.”
Hopefully Chavez Jr. sticks it out with Garcia no matter what happens in this fight. He needs to learn from him as much as he can and stop switching trainers each time something bad happens with his career.