NORTH HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — A FULL DECADE later, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. is bigger than I remember. That’s not to say fat, but at 39, he seems thicker in his bones, wrists and ankles, his features more blunt, even the crown of his head (an apt metaphor for someone born into boxing royalty) more prominent. Still, I can’t help but wonder, under those baggy cotton sweats, if he’ll have trouble making the 200-pound cruiserweight limit for his fight with Jake Paul this Saturday at the Honda Center in Anaheim. Surprised? Shouldn’t be. Chavez Jr.’s entire career has been an ever-perplexing guessing game.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a fan of sorts, and have been since interviewing him and his father in 2015 at a training camp at Lake Tahoe. Those sessions afforded a vivid sense of what it had been like growing up with the most famous name in Mexico, son of its greatest-ever fighter, during a period when that father was, more often as not, high as a kite. But the years since we spoke in Tahoe have seen Chavez Jr. — once the WBC middleweight champion — go just 6-5. Among those losses was Anderson Silva — a UFC Hall of Famer, though not much more than a novice in boxing, and one who had already lost to Paul. Chavez Jr. also quit twice on his stool. Eighteen months ago, he was arrested on gun charges before being released into a residential rehab program. His most recent victory came last July against another aging mixed martial artist, Uriah Hall, who took him the six-round distance in Hall’s pro boxing debut. If I’m to be honest, though, I still root for Junior — as I do anyone who grants not merely an interview, but a glimpse of his or her most vulnerable self, which, more often than not, had sent them to boxing in the first place.
What’s more, because I do like Julio, I found myself taken aback at the bout’s opening presser last month. I’ve heard every variety of prefight provocation going back to Livingstone Bramble calling Ray Mancini “a murderer” for the death of Duk Koo Kim. Fighters will do pretty much anything for an edge. Still, Paul works with great precision. The former Disney kid knows exactly where the wounds are, and how to twist the dagger.
“He’s the embarrassment of Mexico …
“He’s the one who should’ve been on the Disney Channel …
“I’m going to make him quit like he always does.”
Then, directly to Chavez: “There’s two things you can’t beat: me and your drug addiction.”
To make matters worse, at least for Junior, is his father, whom Paul has enlisted as an unwitting co-conspirator in this de facto roast. Chavez Sr., seated on the dais, does most of the talking for Junior. “No way, no how can Jake Paul beat my son,” he says. “I’ve never seen him train like this.”
To which Paul responds: “What is this, ‘Bring Your Dad to Work Day’?”
JULIO CESAR CHAVEZ Sr. was born in 1962, the violent, alcoholic son of a violent, alcoholic father. As his own father’s drinking degenerated, the family lived for a time in a boxcar in Culiacán, a city that became the seat of the Sinaloa drug cartel. Nevertheless, it’s part of boxing’s unlikely majesty that can transform a destitute child like Chavez (or Roberto Duran or Mike Tyson, for that matter) into de facto royalty.
“I always had a desire — to be somebody, to be a great fighter,” Senior once told me.
It was a desire of frightening magnitude — one that left fighters such as Edwin Rosario, Meldrick Taylor and Roger Mayweather forever diminished from their encounters with Chavez.
But what of his namesake’s desire?
Fans of a certain age remember Junior as the little boy with a red headband — a kind of prince, really — poised on an uncle’s shoulders as part of his father’s procession to the ring. But Junior himself recalls something different: his father’s addictions to booze and cocaine. What with all the cartel guys in Culiacán, one imagines it’s like growing up in the third act of “Scarface.”
“Alcohol, and the drugs,” Junior told me in 2015 at a training camp in Lake Tahoe. “Every day, every hour, every second.”
“My kids lived through a very difficult time in my life with my addiction,” Senior acknowledged at one point, holding back tears. “It was very hard on them.”
When he was 12, Junior recalls, local kids would beg his father for money. “If you beat my son,” he’d tell them. “I’ll give you 1,000, 2,000 pesos.”
When Junior won, his father was happy.
Fighting was the way to get his love?
“Yes,” he said. “No fight, no love.”
You angry with him? I asked.
“I have a hard life,” Junior said. “Yes, I’m angry with him.”
Nevertheless, it was Junior who finally delivered his father to rehab. In 2011, per his stepmother’s plan, he waited until Chavez Sr. was anesthetized for a routine surgical procedure, then drove him instead to a residential facility. “If not,” his stepmother, Myriam Chavez, said, “Senior wouldn’t be here today.”
I DON’T KNOW how much healing Junior and Senior have done in the past decade, but I still wonder why a son of Mexico’s greatest fighter would want to become a fighter himself. It’s an unwinnable comparison. Chavez Sr. figured Junior would quit after a fight or two. Instead, there was a time he was considered an overachiever. Despite having no amateur career to speak of, he became a middleweight champion in 2011. The following year, he beat a truly excellent fighter with Olympic pedigree in Andy Lee. Months later, his left eye practically shut, he fell thrillingly short following a 12th-round knockdown of Sergio Martinez. While Martinez managed to survive, Junior earned something on the occasion of his first loss: respect. He was now 46-1-1.
Then came his own bouts with booze and drugs. As the children of addicts are predisposed to addiction themselves, perhaps it was fate, as it had been for his father, and his father’s father. Or maybe, it was something else, the opposite of “no boxing, no love.” Whatever the case, Junior’s training — always a nocturnal affair — became ever more sporadic. Weight management seemed optional. Whatever the cause — laziness, depression or a curious impulse to vandalize the family name — no one would accuse Junior of overtraining.
It makes his father’s remark at last month’s presser — that Junior was working harder than ever for Paul — even more curious. On May 19, just five days later, Junior received a text that was shared with me from his strength and conditioning coach, Chris Camacho:
Julio
Gave this some serious thought and I can’t continue to put the energy into your camp if you are not going to take it seriously. I need to put my energy into other places. I wish you nothing but good things and best of luck on the fight.
Camacho — whose client roster includes Gennadiy Golovkin, Oleksandr Gvozdyk and a host of UFC champions — feels much as I do about Junior: affable and sweet, but given to mystifying acts of self-sabotage. “We had 16 training sessions,” Camacho says. “He missed five or six and was usually late by at least half an hour. I like the kid. I really wanted to believe in him. But I care about my last name, my reputation. I wish he would care about his.”
ELEVEN DAYS BEFORE the fight, our interview is scheduled for 8 p.m., Brickhouse Boxing Club in North Hollywood. Charlie Huerta, Junior’s trainer since the Hall fight, is deeply apologetic that Chavez is late. “They’re packing up to leave right now,” he says.
In actuality, Julio is still waking up. It’s 8:50 p.m. It’ll be another hour before we sit down. In the meantime, Huerta explains that, while he might not be boxing royalty, he, too, was born into the game. His father, Mando, runs the Maywood Boxing Club, known for consistently turning out tough fighters on the east side of Los Angeles. Huerta himself, a former junior lightweight, went 21-7 as a pro. He’s 38, a year younger than Junior, and trying to make it as a trainer. With three kids, this isn’t the kind of gig you turn down.
I ask what Chavez has been doing for strength and conditioning since Camacho fired him. “Mostly, old-school shadowboxing and mitts,” he says. “And some weights.”
Weights?
“Like, dumbbells.”
Sparring?
“Monday, Wednesday and Friday,” says Huerta, who figures Chavez sparred 36 rounds last week.
“Sometimes, it’s hard getting him to the gym,” Huerta concedes. “But once he’s here, he goes 100 percent. And if he’s 100 percent, I don’t see how Jake Paul beats us.”
Fair enough. Maybe Paul can’t take a vintage Chavez Jr. body shot. Still, that’s a whole lot of “if.”
Finally, Chavez trudges in with a coterie of assistants and sparring partners. He looks barely awake. He lays down on the ring apron, an assistant working his calves with a TheraGun. Then we speak as his hands are being wrapped for the workout.
Why are you still fighting? I ask.
“Boxing saved my life.”
How so?
“Helped me stop drinking,” he says. “It’s one of the things.”
There are also two children with his wife, Frida, who was previously married to the son of notorious narco-trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán: Julia, 12, and their son, Julio, 4. It’s been 18 months, says Junior, since he had a drink.
I ask about Camacho, his erstwhile strength and conditioning coach.
“I still text with him,” he says.
Then what was the problem? Here, Huerta intercedes. Basically, Camacho wanted to work four days a week, he says. Julio only wanted two. And not on Saturdays. And the drive was too long.
How do you beat Jake Paul? I ask.
“Throw a lot of punches,” Junior says, somnambulantly. “Train hard.”
What Paul said at the news conference about you and your father? You take it personally?
“No. I expected that.”
Why did he want to fight you? Why did he pick you?
“He thinks I’m old. He wants to take advantage of my situation.”
Age? No. Situation, yes.
It’s Chavez Jr.’s natural condition, a predicament that courses through the bloodline: no boxing, no love.