Has Chavez Jr. Prepped Hard Enough For Martinez?

Published

13 years ago

September 14, 2012

Ron Borges

Chavez Jr workout 120731 003a LAS VEGAS – Freddie Roach is feeling uneasy. It’s a common trait among trainers less than 48 hours before a major fight but this time it is not so much the fight he is worried about. It is his fighter.

Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. has according to many reports been a reluctant student in his preparation for Saturday night’s middleweight showdown with linear champion Sergio Martinez. It is by far the biggest fight of Chavez’s career yet it has been one of the more difficult training camps Roach has had with him, a fact that can be unnerving as fight night approaches.

Roach was repeatedly seen on HBO’s 24/7 documentaries waiting for Chavez to show (or not) at the Top Rank Gym in Las Vegas, where he insisted on training rather than at Roach’s preferred Wild Card Gym in Hollywood. Roach has learned to be liberal about such matters once a man becomes a champion but regardless of the venue the work must be done.

Whether it has been is a question that will only truly be answered Saturday night when Chavez steps in with the 37-year-old Martinez, an aging champion who has shown signs of slippage yet who remains an obsessive preparer for all the possibilities inside the ring.

At 26, Chavez is unbeaten (46-0-1-1, 32 KO), wearer of the WBC strap that was, in Martinez’s opinion, handed to him because of the power of his father’s name, and outwardly at least brimming with confidence. Yesterday Roach insisted that while he was not happy with the manner in which Chavez prepared – which included late-night jogs in the Vegas neon and even later training sessions in the gym – the hay is in the barn. The work, he says, has been done.

“It’s been a little bit of an unusual training camp,’’ the five-time Trainer of the Year admitted. “Sometimes we were training at 1 a.m., 3 a.m, finishing at 6 a.m. Sometimes I had to wait for him but you wait for a world champion. In the end, we got the work in. You’ll see it Saturday night.’’

Perhaps so but it seemed an odd way to prepare for the greatest challenge of your career. Unless, mistakenly, you think it is not. Whether Chavez is wiser than the rest of the boxing public and believes Martinez is now walking on the shady side of the street or whether he is simply a fighter afraid to face the reality of what is coming for him and so he cuts corner in the same way students refuse to study for an exam so that if they fail they can later say, “Well, if I’d studied I would have aced it.’’ remains known only to Chavez himself.

“I’ve seen him knocked down (as recently as in his last fight with British contender Matthew Macklin before Martinez stopped him in the 11^th round),’’ Chavez snapped angrily this week. “I’ve seen him knocked out (early in his career by Antonio Margarito, in a fight he was nowhere near ready for). He looked pretty good (then).

“He talks b——t and then at the time of the right he’s only running, running, running. Saturday he’ll have me all over him!’’

At that the visibly irked Chavez turned toward Martinez, who was sitting only a foot or two away from him and he wagged his finger threateningly.

“I’m not only going to beat you, I’m going to retire you from boxing!’’ Chavez hollered before turning his back on Martinez and walking away.

It was not an act. It was an expression of raw emotion but, one wonders, from what source? Did it come from a deep well of confidence that this is his time and that he is far more than his critics, who say he is a creation of his father’s greatness, insist? Or was his anger spawned from a deeper sense of trepidation, knowing the hour is almost upon him and can no longer be avoided and he is not sure now whether he is up to the task he is about to face?

Saturday night becomes the proving ground for young Chavez, whose resume is a thin one. That doesn’t mean he can’t fight, it only means no one can say for sure if he can. His improvement since Roach took over his training is clear and to be expected. Not only are his workouts now directed by a master craftsman but Chavez is also someone who came late to boxing, having had no real amateur experience before deciding six years ago at the age of 20 to suddenly enter his father’s trade after living his teenage years in the lap of luxury, a dilettante who visited the gym only to see his father sweat.

Now it is his time to sweat and, frankly, some whisper he has not visited the gym often enough this time. They see his decision to take unscheduled off days and to arrive on his own time schedule as fundamental signs of both his immaturity and his lack of understanding of the difficult trade he has entered.

His way, thus far, has been smooth, paved by his father’s legend and the promotional skills of Bob Arum and matchmaking expertise of Bruce Trampler. Unlike most fighters, Chavez had the luxury of being brought along slowly and it has led him to this moment. But now the speed of everything increases. Whether he is up to that, no one knows.

“When we talk boxing now, it’s as equals,’’ the younger Chavez says of his father, a thought that is absurd on one level and the innocence of blind youth on another. Certainly they now both share the same trade and the same right to be called champions but they are not equals and never will be. In a sense however that is unimportant because the only man he must be the equal of now is Martinez.

“I feel very confident in what I can accomplish,’’ Chavez says. “I know how hard it has been working day after day to get to this point. I’m not going to disappoint anyone. You are going to see a complete boxer. I don’t train to lose.’’

That is not the question. The question is have you trained at all? Or at least enough to match Martinez’s movement, ring intelligence and finishing ability?

Like his father before him, Chavez is a hellacious body puncher who can do real damage on the inside if he can get himself in position. He has chopped down many of his opponents with the same relentless body attack that made his father the greatest Mexican fighter in boxing history.

But it is one thing to hit Andy Lee or John Duddy, tough guys who tend to apologize to you if you don’t hit them, and someone like Martinez, whose footwork is sublime from his days as a dancer and soccer player and whose patience is his greatest asset.

Roach has said they have plotted a plan filled with traps set to lure Martinez into places where young Chavez can tear at his body and no one doubts that early in the fight the young champion will attack. Even the challenger said as much, although the reason for it in his mind does not bode well for Chavez.

“What else can he do?’’ Martinez said. “If he tries to box, he just loses faster.’’

Roach has told Chavez Martinez cannot fight backing up but few people can. Then again, backing him up may be a goal difficult to accomplish if his fighter has not laid all the ground work and done all the hard labor in the gym required because unlike his father, who cut corners many times in his preparation, Chavez, Jr. has not been blessed with all the gifts his father was given.

And so we wait to see, anxious to learn if Freddie Roach’s anxiety is simply the normal reaction to the ticking of a clock or the more alarming one to the ticking of a time bomb.

Comment on this article

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Ron Borges

TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

1 hour ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

TSS-Salutes-Thomas-Hauser-and-his-Bernie-Award-Cohorts

The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.

Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.

Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11^th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)

Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.

The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).

Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”

A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.

Other winners:

Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon

Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney

Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire

Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix

The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.

The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

Published

1 day ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Mekhrubon-Sanginov-whose-Heroism-Nearly-Proved-Fatal-Returns-on-Saturday

To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.

He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.

Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.

“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.

“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)

Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.

During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”

He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.

He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.

On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.

Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.

If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis Wins Welterweight Showdown in Atlantic City

Published

4 days ago

April 12, 2025

David A. Avila

Jaron-'Boots'-Ennis-Wins-Welterweight-Showdown-in-Atlantic-City

In the showdown between undefeated welterweight champions Jaron “Boots Ennis walked away with the victory by technical knockout over Eamantis Stanionis and the WBA and IBF titles on Saturday.

No doubt. Ennis was the superior fighter.

“He’s a great fighter. He’s a good guy,” said Ennis.

Philadelphia’s Ennis (34-0, 30 KOs) faced Lithuania’s Stanionis (15-1, 10 KOs) at demonstrated an overpowering southpaw and orthodox attack in front of a sold-out crowd at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

It might have been confusing but whether he was in a southpaw stance or not Ennis busted the body with power shots and jabbed away in a withering pace in the first two rounds.

Stanionis looked surprised when his counter shots seemed impotent.

In the third round the Lithuanian fighter who trains at the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, began using a rocket jab to gain some semblance of control. Then he launched lead rights to the jaw of Ennis. Though Stanionis connected solidly, the Philly fighter was still standing and seemingly unfazed by the blows.

That was a bad sign for Stanionis.

Ennis returned to his lightning jabs and blows to the body and Stanionis continued his marauding style like a Sherman Tank looking to eventually run over his foe. He just couldn’t muster enough firepower.

In the fifth round Stanionis opened up with a powerful body attack and seemed to have Ennis in retreat. But the Philadelphia fighter opened up with a speedy combination that ended with blood dripping from the nose of Stanionis.

It was not looking optimistic for the Lithuanian fighter who had never lost.

Stanionis opened up the sixth round with a three-punch combination and Ennis met him with a combination of his own. Stanionis was suddenly in retreat and Ennis chased him like a leopard pouncing on prey. A lightning five-punch combination that included four consecutive uppercuts delivered Stanionis to the floor for the count. He got up and survived the rest of the round.

After returning shakily to his corner, the trainer whispered to him and then told the referee that they had surrendered.

Ennis jumped in happiness and now holds the WBA and IBF welterweight titles.

“I felt like I was getting in my groove. I had a dream I got a stoppage just like this,” said Ennis.

Stanionis looked like he could continue, but perhaps it was a wise move by his trainer. The Lithuanian fighter’s wife is expecting their first child at any moment.

Meanwhile, Ennis finally proved the expectations of greatness by experts. It was a thorough display of superiority over a very good champion.

“The biggest part was being myself and having a live body in front of me,” said Ennis. “I’m just getting started.”

Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn was jubilant over the performance of the Philadelphia fighter.

“What a wonderful humble man. This is one of the finest fighters today. By far the best fighter in the division,” said Hearn. “You are witnessing true greatness.”

Other Bouts

Former featherweight world champion Raymond Ford (17-1-1, 8 KOs) showed that moving up in weight would not be a problem even against the rugged and taller Thomas Mattice (22-5-1, 17 KOs) in winning by a convincing unanimous decision.

The quicksilver southpaw Ford ravaged Mattice in the first round then basically cruised the remaining nine rounds like a jackhammer set on automatic. Four-punch combinations pummeled Mattice but never put him down.

“He was a smart veteran. He could take a hit,” said Ford.

Still, there was no doubt on who won the super featherweight contest. After 10 rounds all three judges gave Ford every round and scored it 100-90 for the New Jersey fighter who formerly held the WBA featherweight title which was wrested from him by Nick Ball.

Shakhram Giyasov (17-0, 10 KOs) made good on a promise to his departed daughter by knocking out Argentina’s Franco Ocampo (17-3, 8 KOs) in their welterweight battle.

Giyasov floored Ocampo in the first round with an overhand right but the Argentine fighter was able to recover and fight on for several more rounds.

In the fourth frame, Giyasov launched a lead right to the liver and collapsed Ocampo with the body shot for the count of 10 at 1:57 of the fourth round.

“I had a very hard camp because I lost my daughter,” Giyasov explained. “I promised I would be world champion.”

In his second pro fight Omari Jones (2-0) needed only seconds to disable William Jackson (13-6-2) with a counter right to the body for a knockout win. The former Olympic medalist was looking for rounds but reacted to his opponent’s actions.

“He was a veteran he came out strong,” said Jones who won a bronze medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics. “But I just stayed tight and I looked for the shot and I landed it.”

After a feint, Jackson attacked and was countered by a right to the rib cage and down he went for the count at 1:40 of the first round in the welterweight contest.

Photo credit: Matchroom

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!