It was a long way from the glory days of Ruben Olivares, Pipino Cuevas, or JCC Senior, but Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. outpointed Sebastian Zbik over 12 taxing rounds to win his first title trinket via majority decision at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Final scores were 114-114, 115-113, and an off-base 116-112.
Chavez did not look particularly good in barely notching the win, but Zbik answered the opening bell last night a vastly improved fighter, much more aggressive than in his last few outings. Later, Zbik would say that he thought he had to win definitively in order to snatch a decision from Chavez in Los Angeles. This may explain his sudden change of tactics and the overall tightness of his style. Gone were the loopy lead uppercuts, the incessant holding, and the left hand formerly held at his thigh.
Ironically, he could have used some of those flaws against Chavez. Holding would have prevented Chavez from belaboring him to the body with such ease, and a right uppercut would have been the perfect weapon against a six foot fighter who leans forward like a man viewing a kinetoscope. Zbik was all business in the ring, but dropping the last three rounds outright cost him the bout. If Zbik learns to fight in the trenches and gets some leverage on his shots, he can pose problems for plenty of middleweights in the future.
It was an arduous bout, full of fits and starts, but both men mixed it up willingly for long stretches, Zbik with accurate combinations and pinpoint jabs; Chavez with a relentless body attack and the occasional sneak uppercut.
Zbik, 158 3/4, chose to meet Chavez head-on, a questionable strategy, especially considering how clumsy Chavez is on the outside. But for the first quarter of the fight, it looked like Zbik would get away with fighting aggressively. He smacked Chavez around with precise sequences of punches, and took an early lead, winning four of the first five rounds hands down. But his blows were pattycake shots for the most part, and Chavez landed an assortment of sharp lefts to the body that would pay off as the fight wore on.
Little by little, Chavez, 160, began to claw his way back into the bout. As Zbik, Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany began to wilt from the body shots, Chavez pressed forward, showing pluck and determination. Zbik outworked Chavez for most of the rounds, but Chavez landed some eyecatching shots, including big right hands to end the sixth. By the late rounds, behind on the cards, Chavez made one final push, battering Zbik to the ribcage and sweeping the 10th, 11th, and 12th rounds.
It was a hard-fought win for Chavez, Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico, but he has certainly reached his peak. He did not have the oomph he showed against John Duddy last year, and his footwork seems to have gotten worse lately. At times, Chavez wound up southpaw on the inside against Zbik, and when the two separated, Chavez had to work hard to set his footing again. In addition, his defense is about as reliable as a Confederate dollar. If you can miss Chavez, then you must be the type who can leave a beach after a day of gamboling without a grain of sand to note. Chavez was bruised and puffy at the final bell, and only the fact that Zbik, 30-1 (10), punches like a putzfrau kept him from being decapitated. That, and the astonishing fact that Chavez entered the ring at 180 pounds.
With the win, Chavez puts himself in a strange position: He will now, as ?champion,? be a walking target for middleweights who are light years ahead of him in skill. No one will turn down any big money packages or quibble about foreign pay-per-view rights if a contract to fight Chavez is proffered. Even fighters like Andy Lee or Marco Antonio Rubio pose a serious risk to him.
Top Rank will have some serious prestidigitation to do to build a meaningful pay off against Miguel Cotto or, if Bob Arum and Golden Boy have truly settled their differences, Saul Alvarez, which is probably the fastest money train around for all involved. Most likely, Arum will throw Chavez in with Miguel Cotto right away in a win-win situation for the promoter, who knows that the winner will emerge as a bankable name for further fights down the road.
Now 42-0-1-1 (30), Chavez stands poised to be the next hobbyhorse for clueless media hacks who think that only Cy Young Award winners ought to be allowed to throw a baseball, even if they?re hurling cut sliders at Special Olympics players in a dimly lit alley, and even if the Cy Young Award winners are products of the collective cyber-imagination. No, Chavez is not the second coming of Carlos Zarate. And Zbik is never going to make anyone think of Max Schmeling. But they both fought with pride, determination, and ambition from bell to bell, despite their reputations as ordinary pugs. We should all be so lucky to see ordinary pugs go at it like that more often.
