Can Jake Paul prove anything new against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, or is it the same old song and dance?
Jake Paul and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr met up for a press conference today to promote their June 28 DAZN pay-per-view main event, which will see the long-faded Chavez, 39, face the king of the gimmick fighters.
Paul, 28, insisted that this is a fan-demanded fight, and seemed incapable of making up his mind about whether Chavez is actually any good or not.
“This fight has been brewing for quite some time now. The fans have wanted to see this, and I want to continue to elevate and raise the level of my opponents,” he said. “This is a former world champion, and he has an amazing resume following in his dad’s footsteps. This guy is a great fighter, and I want to test myself against the best in the world.”
“I’m going to embarrass him and make him quit like he always does,” he went on to say. “I don’t want any excuses. When I beat this man, all the boxing media, like you always do, are going to discredit it. I’m going to expose and embarrass him. He’s the embarrassment of Mexico. Mexico doesn’t even claim him, and he’s going to get exposed.
“They say he’s training hard. They say this is the most focused he’s ever been. Good. As he should be. People don’t realize how good I actually am, and when he feels those first few punches, he’s going to want to quit and go back to his stool.”
Let’s make this clear up front: Jake Paul deserves the same respect for climbing into a ring that anyone else does, because it’s always dangerous, and I do think Jake takes this seriously, trains hard, and has honest respect for boxing. He is as good as you could expect him to be.
But he’s not a serious professional prospect or emerging actual contender, and this fight with Chavez won’t change that.
One of the consistent tactics Paul (11-1, 7 KO) uses in promoting himself is attacking media or fans who don’t take him seriously, which is a way to side-step the issue that he’s never done anything in a boxing ring that demands being taken seriously other than losing to Tommy Fury, who also isn’t a serious prospect despite his last name.
Aside from Fury, the only “real boxers” that Paul has faced were Andre August and Ryan Bourland, club-level pros who had each been largely inactive for several years and faced Paul fighting well over their natural weights.
What has Jake Paul achieved in a boxing ring otherwise? He’s beaten an “influencer,” a basketball player, five washed up MMA fighters, and the 58-year-old, rusted out shell of Mike Tyson.
But before you begin to think this is merely a “hit piece” on Jake Paul’s “boxing career,” let’s get into his June opponent.
Julio Cesar Chavez Jr has never been a great fighter and he’s sure not about to become one. There have been several wins in his career that were debatable at best, with Junior coming through on the cards in a way that is strangely frequent in boxing, where the guy worth more money somehow always seems to nick it.
Long before Chavez got around to being finely and truly exposed at world level by Sergio Martinez in 2013, Chavez could have had losses on his record to Carlos Molina (twice), Matt Vanda, Luciano Cuello, Sebastian Zbik, and Marco Antonio Rubio.
After Martinez routed him — albeit with Chavez showing his flair for the dramatic by dropping Sergio in the final round — he had a close call with Brian Vera before being thrashed by Andrzej Fonfara, and he never got back on track.
The Fonfara fight happened 10 years ago last month.
What’s he done since? Some wins over so-so guys, one of the worst PPV main event performances of all time against Canelo Alvarez in 2017, a quit job that started a small riot against Daniel Jacobs in 2019, and losses to Mario Cazares and Anderson Silva — the same Anderson Silva who went on to lose to Paul at age 47.
The only fight Chavez has had since 2021 came last July in a win over MMA fighter Uriah Hall, which was on a Jake Paul undercard and obviously meant to plant a seed.
Chavez was never as good as his promotional hype, but he hasn’t done anything of truly positive note in a boxing ring since roaring back to stop Andy Lee at El Paso’s Sun Bowl in 2012, which was the best performance of his career and one worth genuine respect.
Chavez is tough. He’s always been tough. But he’s also always been unreliable, seen as incredibly lazy and almost indifferent about actual fight preparation and training, and to anyone who understands the finer points of boxing achievements in the modern age — e.g., winning a world title doesn’t necessarily mean what it should — a far cry short of who we were told he was by the people making money from his fights.
He is also now old, inactive, fighting 40 lbs over his best weight, and has already proven far less capable of beating the sorts of guys that Paul routinely beats handily.
Jake Paul will tell you on one hand that Chavez is an embarrassment and will be exposed, and on the other that he’s a great fighter and that beating him will mean something.
It won’t, really. And if Chavez beats him, then Paul should really consider a new revenue stream to replace this one, because the version of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr he’s going to fight in six weeks isn’t even in the same ballpark as the one that was overrated at his peak.
Jake Paul can’t prove anything new with this fight. It’s the same sort of opponent he’s tried to sell you repeatedly, only this time they can slap a sticker on the box that says “former boxing world champion.”
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