By James Slater: The Julio Cesar Chavez Junior-Ronald Hearns clash, for the “regular” WBC middleweight title, has been scrapped. As has been reported on ESPN.com, Chavez suffered a laceration on his hand approx two-weeks ago and the injury has not healed in time for the fight to proceed. Hearns’ promoter, Lou DiBella is said to be fuming due to the situation.
DiBella is angry because, amongst other things, the press conference for the fight went ahead AFTER Chavez had suffered his injury. The promoter also spoke of how he heard Chavez Jr. was “sparring two days ago with Antonio Margarito.” DiBella says he strongly doubts the hand injury happened weeks ago, and he referred to the reported weight problems Chavez had been encountering pre-fight.
“I totally saw this coming when the 30 day weights — was going on,” DiBella said. “They released Hearns’ weight and wouldn’t release Chavez’ weight until a couple of days later. Come on. Ronald is going to be crushed because he was working his ass off. He loved this fight. He thought he might land a big right hand. I think it would have been a competitive fight. An out of shape Chavez loses to an in-shape Hearns and I think that’s why the fight isn’t happening.”
To be fair to Chavez, he wanted to go ahead with the fight despite the hand problem.
“He still wants to fight, but he really cant,” Chavez’ manager Billy Keane told ESPN.com. “I advised him to pull out when this first happened. He wanted to push on and fight. He’s got no respect for Ronald Hearns. He thinks he annihilates him. He thinks he’s too strong and he will break him down – even with one hand and a short camp.”
Keane went on to say that his fighter’s weight was 171-pounds, and that the only reason the WBC released Chavez’ weight as late as they did is because they could not locate the fighter any sooner.
Most experts also predicted a Chavez win in the now-lost “Battle of The Juniors.” We will never know now who would have won.
It is presumed the unbeaten Chavez Junior will now proceed with his planned November defence against former “Contender” star Peter Manfredo Junior. Sadly for Hearns, he may struggle to find himself another world title shot – unless, by some long-shot, Chavez agrees to a rearranged date with Hearns, providing he gets past Manfredo. How much longer this would keep WBC mandatory challenger Marco Antonio Rubio waiting (and feeling very angry) we can only guess.