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When I left the post fight press conference for this Saturday night’s Miguel Cotto-Ricardo Mayorga clash at the MGM Grand around 11 PM I thought that I had gotten nearly all of my coverage for the night. It was a hectic weekend but it turns out I wasn’t quite done as I spotted a familiar face out of the corner of my eye as I walked through the masses inside of the casino.
Turns out that Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. was in town to check out the action. Last year the 24-year old was rumored to be a potential opponent for Cotto in December but the Puerto Rican opted to sit out the remainder of his 2010 schedule while Chavez Jr. saw a fight with Pawel Wolak fall by the wayside after suffering a flu.
<--- Slideshow: Behind the scenes at the MGM with Chavez Jr., Margarito, Marquez, Barrera, Cotto, Mayorga and others
Asked for his take on Cotto’s performance, which saw him chop down Mayorga for a 12th round TKO inside of the Garden Arena, Chavez felt that it was a solid scrap but that Cotto could have gotten him out of there earlier had he applied more pressure and stepped up his combination punching.
After his fallout with Cotto we saw Jr. return with an uninspiring ten-round decision over Billy Lyell in late January in his native Sinaloa, Mexico and he is now lined up for his first crack at a world championship as he looks to challenge WBC middleweight champion Sebastian Zbik on June 4th in Los Angeles. It seems to be the only thing that the young fighter is thinking about right now.
“It’s the most important fight of my life. I’m just preparing for this fight,” Chavez said.
At the moment Chavez’s trainer Freddie Roach is in the Philippines dividing his time between WBA junior welterweight champion Amir Khan and WBO welterweight king Manny Pacquiao for their separate bouts. Chavez says he is ready to do whatever Roach wants when the time is right and the two will probably hook up sometime next month when the trainer returns to his stomping grounds at the Wild Card Boxing Club.
Before I left I had to ask Chavez about a potential fight with recently-crowned WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez, still fresh off of a victory over Matthew Hatton in Anaheim, California. A match between the two would be one of the biggest fights to make amongst the Mexican population but there has been an ongoing feud between Top Rank, who co-promote Chavez, and Golden Boy Promotions, who guide Alvarez.
Outside of that fact Chavez Jr. simply doesn’t feel that Alvarez wants the fight, at least for the moment.
“I don’t think we could even make the fight because of the difference in promoters and difference in television. Alvarez can’t fight with me. Not yet. It’s a good fight but I think Saul Alvarez is scared.”
