It's Time to Give Up on Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. Living Up to His Potential

The contrast could not be any clearer for Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.

On the same night that Lucas Matthysse and Ruslan Provodnikov went to war in a fight where you could feasibly see either man choosing death over surrender, boxing’s long-reigning poster child for entitlement pulled the “no mas” card and quit on his stool against Andrzej Fonfara.

Chavez Jr.’s decision, which could clearly be heard on Showtime’s video replay after the fight, was treated as unforgivable by the thousands of Mexican fans who jammed into the StubHub Center and sent him off with a cascade of boos and flying beer bottles.

You’d have thought it was raining in Carson, California, what with all the liquid refreshment pouring from the skies, but that was just the end product of a fanbase that finally came to grips with a harsh reality.

What you see is what you get with Chavez Jr., and that’s a fighter who spent many years trading off the name of his famous father but was never willing to do the things necessary to make that name his own.

And they’ll never forgive him for that.

Fonfara proved to be the final nail in that coffin, and that’s not meant to take anything away from the 27-year-old Pole, who gave lineal light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson a run for his money last May.

From the opening round it was clear that Chavez Jr. had bitten off more than he could chew by returning from an extended layoff in a new weight class against a man who was naturally larger than him.

His father advised him against taking this fight at this time, but with Al Haymon now calling the shots and Showtime televising the carnage, the warning from Chavez Sr.—the greatest champion Mexico ever produced—wasn’t heeded.

Fonfara consistently beat his man to the punch, while Chavez Jr.’s offense was largely limited to the rare ineffective burst of activity followed up by a stream of complaints to the referee about non-existent fouls.

The constant complaining, moping and feel-sorry-for-myself faces only added to an already bad look and helped to eliminate any residual sympathy some of the assembled fans and media might have been feeling.

It was the look of a fighter who was genuinely unsure of what to do next against an opponent who wouldn’t fold up the tent because of his name or the legendary lineage it represents.

After all, this was the same guy who basically Skyped his training for a middleweight championship fight against Sergio Martinez—a grudge match and the biggest opportunity of his career—before taking a one-sided beating for all but the fight’s final 30 seconds.

It was also the guy who showed a propensity for breaking the rules, developed a reputation for partying hard and having an inconsistent and often non-existent commitment to the rigors of professional prizefighting at this level.

This Chavez Jr. was the same one who got a borderline criminal—slight hyperbole—decision over Brian Vera in a fight that required only a pen and a working set of eyes to see that the house fighter lost decisively.

Fonfara wasn’t willing to leave anything to chance—though it’s worth noting he was widely up on all three scorecards at the time of the stoppage, even after a spurious point deduction in Round 7 for pushing with his elbow.

He dropped Chavez Jr. hard in Round 9, the first knockdown suffered in his career, and it would have only been a matter of time before the decision was made to quit in the corner.

Julie Jacobson/Associated Press

Chavez Jr’.s post-fight meltdown/rant to Jim Gray was equal parts sad, bizarre and painful to watch.

Gray, a veteran sportscaster who has probably seen and heard pretty close to it all, looked dumbfounded throughout the entire course of the interview.

Chavez Jr.’s delusional contention that he was winning the fight raised legitimate questions about his physical and mental state after taking a pretty good whack to the head.

It’s as though he didn’t even fully comprehend that he quit.

But that’s OK.

We don’t yet know whether this marks the official last station on the train route that is the career of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.—he still has a name, and you can already read the excuses about long layoffs and the weight being too much—but we do know this: The fans, particularly Mexican fans, hate a quitter.

And they’ll remind him of that every chance they get.

No mas.