North Hollywood, California – Full decade Later Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. It is bigger than I remember. This does not mean fat, but at the age of 39 it seems thicker in its bones, wrists and cubes, its more blunt features, even a crown of the head (a good metaphor for someone born in boxing) more noticeable. Despite this, I can’t not think about, under the bag’s cotton sweat, if he has a problem with making a 200-pound cruiser’s weight limit in the fight with Jake Paul on Saturday at the Honda Center in Anaheim. Surprised? It should not be. The whole career of Chavez Jr. She was an increasingly percandic guessing game.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a fan and since then Interview with him and his father In 2015 at the Lake Tahoe training camp. These sessions gave a vibrant sense of how it was to grow up with the most celebrated name in Mexico, the son of his greatest warrior in history, in the period in which his father was, more often, high as a kite. But years, since we talked in Tahoe, they saw Chavez Jr.-Once Master of Medium WBC-only 6-5. Among these losses was Anderson Silva – UFC Hall of Famer, although not much more than a novice in boxing and the one who has already lost to Paul. Chavez Jr. He also gave up on a stool twice. Eighteen months ago he was arrested on charges of weapons before he was released in a residential rehabilitation program. His last victory took place in July last year against other aging mixed struggle artists, Uriasz Hall, who took him six -currents in Hall’s Pro Boxing’s debut. However, if I am truthful, I still take root for a junior – because I make everyone who only gives an interview, but with a look at his most sensitive self, which most often sent them to boxing in the first place.

What’s more, because I like Julio, last month I surprised the pressure opening the fight. I heard that every variety of provocations before a fight reaching Livingstone Bramble, calling Ray Mancini a “murderer” to the death of Duk Koo Kim. My fighters will do almost anything to gain an advantage. Despite this, Paweł works with great precision. The former Disney kid knows exactly where the wounds are and how to twist the dagger.

“It’s embarrassing Mexico …

“The one who should have been on the Disney channel …

“I will make him give up as always.”

Then directly to Chavez: “There are two things you can’t overcome: me and your drug addiction.”

Even worse, at least for junior is his father, whom Paweł enlisted as unaware co -helps for this roast. Chavez Sr., sitting on the podium, most conversations about junior. “There is no way, no Jake Paul can defeat my son,” he says. “I’ve never seen him train like that.”

What Paweł replies to: “What is it:” Take your dad to work day “?

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Julio Cesar Chavez Sr. He was born in 1962, a violent, alcoholic son of a brutal alcoholic. When his father drinks, the family lived for some time in a T -shirt in Culiacán, a city that became the seat of the Sinaloa drug cartel. Nevertheless, it is part of the unlikely majesty of boxing, which can transform without life measures, such as Chavez (or Roberto Duran or Mike Tyson, in this case) in de facto royalty.

“I have always had a desire – to be someone, being a great warrior,” a senior once told me.

It was a desire for terrifying size – one that left fighters such as Edwin Rosario, Meldrick Taylor and Roger Mayweather have forever decreased from their meetings with Chavez.

But what about the desire for his namesake?

Fans of a certain age remember the junior as a compact boy with a red band – a kind of prince, really – prepared on the shoulders of his uncle as part of the father’s procession to the ring. But Junior himself resembles something else: his father’s addiction to alcohol and cocaine. What about all guys from Culiacán cartels, he imagines that it is like growing up in the third act of “Scarface”.

“Alcohol and drugs” – Junior told me in 2015 at a training camp in Lake Tahoe. “Every day every hour, every second.”

“My children survived a very complex time in my life with my addiction,” admitted the senior at some point, stopping tears. “It was very complex for them.”

When he was 12 years senior, he recalls Junior, local children begged their father for money. “If you defeat my son,” he would say to them. “I will give you 1000, 2000 pesos.”

When Junior won, his father was ecstatic.

Was the fight a way to gain his love?

“Yes,” he said. “No fight, no love.”

Are you furious with him? I asked.

“I have a challenging life,” said Junior. “Yes, I’m furious with him.”

Nevertheless, it was Junior who finally delivered his father to rehabilitation. In 2011, according to Macochy, he waited for Chavez Sr. He will be anesthetized to a routine surgical procedure and then pulled him into a housing plant. “If not,” said his stepmother, Myriam Chavez, “Senior would not be here today.”

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I DON’T KNOW How many healing juniors and seniors have they made in the last decade, but I still wonder why the son of the greatest warrior of Mexico would like to become a warrior himself. This is an incomplete comparison. Chavez sr. He thought that Junior would give up after a fight or two. Instead, there was a time when he was considered exceeding. Although he did not have an amateur career, he became a champion in the average in 2011. The following year, he defeated a really perfect warrior with an Olympic pedigree in Andy Lee. A few months later, the left eye practically closed, he felt exhilarating shortly after knocking out Sergio Martinez in the 12th round. While Martinez managed to survive, Junior won something on his first loss: respect. He was now 46-1-1.

Then his own fights with alcohol and drugs appeared. Because addicted children are predisposed to addiction, maybe it was fate, just like for his father and father’s father. Or maybe it was something different, the opposite of “without boxing, without love.” In any case, junior training – always a night affair – became more and more sporadic. Weight management seemed optional. Regardless of the cause – laziness, depression or an captivating impulse to devastate the family name – no one would accuse the younger of overtraining.

This makes his father’s attention last month – that Junior worked harder than ever for Paul – even more captivating. On May 19, just five days later, Junior received a text that was made available to me from his trainer, Chris Camacho:

Camacho-where list of customers includes Gennadiy Golovkin, Oleksandr Gvozdyk and a lot of UFC masters-I feel like I do about junior: kind and sweet, but taking into account the mystification of sabotage acts. “We had 16 training sessions,” says Camacho. “There was a shortage of five or six and he was usually delayed at least half an hour. I like a child. I really wanted to believe in him. But I care about my name, my reputation. I would like him to worry about him.”

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Eleven days earlier Fight, our interview is scheduled for 20:00, Brickhouse Boxing Club in North Hollywood. Charlie Huerta, a coach of the younger one since the fight with Hall, is deeply apologizing that Chavez is delayed. “They are packing now to leave,” he says.

In fact, Julio is still waking up. It’s 20:50, it will be another hour before we sit down. In the meantime, Huerta explains that although he may not be in boxing, he was also born in the game. His father, Mando, runs the Maywood Boxing Club, known for its consistent showing of challenging fighters on the eastern side of Los Angeles. Huerta himself, the former lightweight younger, passed 21-7 as a professional. He is 38 years senior, a year younger than junior and tries to make him a coach. With three children, this is not a kind of concert you reject.

I ask what Chavez did for strength and condition since Camacho released him. “Mostly senior school shadowboxing and gloves,” he says. “And a few weights.”

Weights?

“Like dumbbells.”

Sparring?

“Monday, Wednesday and Friday,” says Huerta, who invents 36 rounds last week.

“Sometimes it is complex to kill him at the gym,” admits Huerta. “But when it is here, it goes 100 percent. And if it is 100 percent, I do not understand how Jake Paul defeats us.”

Fair enough. Maybe Paul cannot make a vintage chavez jr. style shot. Still, it is a lot of “if”.

Finally, Chavez gets into the assistants of assistants and sparring partners. Looks barely sleeping. It accumulates on a ring apron, an assistant working with calves with Terragun. Then we say when his hands are wrapped in training.

Why are you still fighting? I’m asking.

“Boxing saved my life.”

How

“It helped me stop drinking,” he says. “This is one of the things.”

There are also two children with his wife, Frida, who was previously married to the son of the celebrated Narco-Trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán: Julia, 12 years senior) and their son, Julio, 4 years senior. 18 months have passed, he says the younger since he drank.

I am asking about Camacho, his former strength and condition coach.

“I still write with him,” he says.

So what was the problem? Here Huerta intervenes. He says Camacho wanted to work four days a week. Julio only wanted two. And not on Saturdays. And the drive was too long.

How will you defeat Jake Paul? I’m asking.

“Throw a lot of blows,” says Junior. “Train challenging.”

What did Paweł say at a press conference about you and your father? Do you take it personally?

“No, I expected it.”

Why did he want to fight you? Why did he choose you?

“He thinks I’m senior. He wants to take advantage of my situation.”

Age? NO. Yes, yes.

This is the natural state of Chavez Jr., a problem that goes through the blood line: without boxing, without love.