Can you believe it?
The much mocked son of legendary Mexican warrior Julio Cesar Chavez is at it again. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr (50-3-1, 32 KOs) has officially withdrawn from Showtime’s pre-show for Saturday’s major PPV headlined by the lineal heavyweight championship bout between Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury. He was scheduled to meet a badly faded and drawn up in weight version of Alfredo Angulo (24-7, 20 KOs), but that will not be happening. Angulo will still reportedly be competing on the deep undercard.
The 32 year old has not competed since his embarrassing non-performance against Canelo Alvarez in May of last year. Julio was outclassed that night and simply elected not to take a single risk or make any sort of effort to win. It was a dreadful fight and potentially the final stain on his career in terms of relevance. This fight could have been the start of an image rehabilitation effort, but instead it is yet another black mark against him in the eyes of fight fans.
People do seem to forget his respectable middleweight run to a title to be fair. Chavez won a title and knocked out Andy Lee even. He hasn’t shown anything above 160 lbs, however, and much of his success at the weight is attributed to Julio’s massive six advantage against middleweights. The fight with Angulo was supposed to be a super middleweight bout. Yet, Chavez Jr had not submitted medicals to California and rumors had been swirling about a recent trip to a rehabilitation facility. It was hardly a surprise when his legendary father and team deemed him unfit to compete this weekend and pulled him off the card. I wonder if he was even on course to make 168 lbs.
The broadcast will be truncated now. Without Chavez Jr-Angulo, the Showtime PPV pre-show will begin at 7:45 PM Eastern instead of 6:45 and will air only the WBC light heavyweight bout between Adonis Stevenson and Oleksandr Gvozdyk, That is an outstanding fight and fine by me.
