The long goodbye: former rivals Fonfara and Chavez Jr hit the 6-rounder circuit

The date was April 18, 2015. Nine months shy of a full decade ago. That was the night Andrzej “Andrew” Fonfara, aged 27, stopped Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, aged 29, in the ninth round of a light-heavyweight bout atop a Showtime card at what was then called the StubHub Center in Carson, California.

That was the last great moment Fonfara would have in a boxing ring. And you can make the case that Chavez never had another good moment after that – never mind a great one.

Nine years and three months later, Chavez and Fonfara are both fighting.

In scheduled six-rounders, on July 20.

Fonfara’s fight is part of an untelevised club show. Chavez’s is deep on an undercard of a pay-per-view headlined by someone who, at the time of the Fonfara-Chavez fight, was primarily famous for his Vines.

Chavez is facing Uriah Hall – a supposedly retired MMA fighter with one pro boxing match on his ledger. If this sounds like an easy spot for Chavez, a veteran of 61 pro bouts, let’s recall that two fights ago he dropped a decision to Anderson Silva, who was boxing as a pro for the third time and whom Chavez outweighed by 10lbs.

Fonfara is facing Fabio Maldonado, a 44 year old who is 4-9 in his past 13 fights. This fight is at heavyweight, and it’s Fonfara’s first time in the ring in a little over six years.

I’m reminded of that line from Philip Seymour Hoffman’s version of Lester Bangs in Almost Famous, when he tells William of his high school antagonists, “You’ll meet them all again on their long journey to the middle”.

This is the way it is with so many of the fighters we once watched compete at the highest levels of the sport. More often than not, they stick around until all they have left is their name. Some find their way into sideshow fights against celebrities of a sort. Some retire and unretire, and retire and unretire. Some step on the scale 30lbs heavier than they did in their prime.

They don’t necessarily hit rock bottom; they aren’t among the worst boxers in the world or anything. They just find their way to the middle.

And it never gets easier to watch for fans and media who followed them when they were young and ripped and had fire in their bellies and hair on their heads.

None of this is meant as a knock on Chavez or Fonfara. Maybe this is the best way for Chavez to make money. Maybe Fonfara has an itch that needs scratching. They’re big boys. If they can pass the tests, they have every right to fight, and all we can ask is that they give an honest effort in the ring.

But it’s still sad to see their names pop up on the fight schedule, at this level, in 2024.

Especially after I remembered where I was the night Fonfara fought Chavez.

I knew I was at some other fight card, because I remember hearing the result whispered down press row — damn, Fonfara beat up Chavez and stopped him. But I couldn’t recall at first what fight I was at.

Then it came to me – Lucas Matthysse’s majority decision win over Ruslan Provodnikov at Turning Stone Casino in upstate New York.

And this is notable now because of the contrast between what followed for Matthysse and Provodnikov and what has followed for Fonfara and Chavez.

Matthysse fought just four more times after outboxing Provodnikov. He was stopped by Viktor Postol in what was perceived at the time as an upset. He knocked out a couple of B-level welterweights in Emanuel Taylor and Tewa Kiram. He suffered a high-profile, big-payday stoppage loss to Manny Pacquiao in Kuala Lumpur. The date was July 15, 2018; Matthysse was 35 years old, and, though he talked comeback a time or two after that, he hasn’t actually fought since.

Provodnikov got out even sooner and younger. After losing to Matthysse he stopped the relatively anonymous Jesus Alvarez Rodriguez in Monte Carlo, then lost a decision to John Molina Jr — the same John Molina Jr that Matthysse had halted two years prior in a fight of the year candidate — and that was it. The date was June 11, 2016; Provodnikov was 32, and, though he’s dabbled in the charity/exhibition side of the fight game, he hasn’t fought professionally since.

There was no long, sad tail to either of these careers. No, they didn’t go out on top, like, say, Andre Ward, or Joe Calzaghe, or Rocky Marciano, or one of a handful of other names on a depressingly short list. But they didn’t go out having slipped to the middle either.

They got out while the gettin’ was … good enough.

If Fonfara were not scheduled to fight this Saturday, you could have made the case that he did the same. He stopped Chavez in what appeared a breakout performance, kept the momentum going more or less with a decision win over Nathan Cleverly, and then suffered a shocking first-round knockout loss in his adopted hometown of Chicago against Joe Smith Jr. Hey, it happens. Smith was a pure puncher.

Fonfara bounced back and beat faded ex-champion Chad Dawson. But then he got stopped early in the second round by lineal light-heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson — a rematch to a very close distance fight from three years earlier. Stevenson was a massive puncher as well, and once can be a fluke, but twice is a pattern. Fonfara fought one more time, against the non-threatening Ismayl Sillah, and stepped away at age 30, when his best days were behind him but before he’d had an overabundance of lousy days in boxing.

He’s putting the “that wasn’t so bad” memory of his last act at risk when he tries again this weekend at age 36. And maybe it will go well. Names like Eder Jofre, Vitali Klitschko, and “Sugar” Ray Leonard spring to mind — sometimes success is found in a return from a lengthy retirement.

Of course, those are very much the exceptions – not the rule. A career-long light heavyweight deciding after six years away from the game that he’s ready to tangle with the largest men in the sport is a worrisome formula. I wish Fonfara well. But I also wish he hadn’t felt the need to do this.

Chavez Jr is a different case. He hasn’t disappeared from the spotlight like Fonfara has. Although he too is coming off a layoff on Saturday — a relatively modest two-and-a-half years — for the most part, we’ve had front-row seats for his steady downward spiral.

After bouncing back from the Fonfara loss with a couple of 10-round decision wins, he cashed in against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, boiled down to 164lbs, and had nothing to offer in a 120-108 loss on all scorecards. Two fights later he surrendered on his stool after five rounds against Daniel Jacobs (and was pelted with debris by the angry crowd in Phoenix). Then he lost by technical decision to the little-known Mario Cazares (who got stopped in a single round by David Morrell in his next fight). Two fights later Chavez lost to MMA star Silva. He rebounded with a decision win over one David Zegarra in his next fight, in December 2021, and now Junior fights again — at age 38.

Chavez is a unique case – different from Fonfara, Provodnikov, Matthysse, or almost any other championship-level boxer from a decade or so ago. He has a name that will always mean something to boxing fans. He will thus always make some sense as an off-center add-on to round out a PPV card. Like a four-rounder involving Butterbean on a Top Rank show in the late ‘90s, or like the women’s fights on bills of that era — back when the female fighters were generally less skilled than they are now — it’s comfort food. It’s a change-of-pace fight. It’s something for the type of casual fan who may be drawn to a Jake Paul-headlined card.

Oh, Chavez, Jr. Yeah. I remember him.

Maybe they remember him fondly. Maybe they don’t. But in the boxing world, the surname resonates, and, at the risk of mixing (or, in this case, intertwining) metaphors, Chavez’s name gives him a lot of extra rope as he’s playing out the string.

Saturday will be a sadder day than most for a certain generation of boxing fan. It’s all part of the trajectory of a boxing career, and we’ve seen it a million times, but you still never quite get 100 per cent used to it.

Six-rounders on the way up are fundamental to every young boxer’s development. Six-rounders on the way down are exactly what every young boxer with big dreams hopes to avoid.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, Ringside Seat, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory and currently co-hosts The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X or LinkedIn, or via email at [email protected].