Julio César Chávez Jr. and the burden of nepotism

Yahoo

8 hours ago

July 7, 2001: As he looked for a way out between Rounds 5 and 6, Héctor Camacho Jr. focused only on the slender cut above his right eye and the story he would soon have to tell. He tried as best he could to ignore the boos ringing out inside Brooklyn's KeySpan Park, and he also ignored the fact that his father, a three-weight world champion known as 'Macho' Camacho, had never been stopped in 88 professional fights.
Because this, you see, was not your ordinary stoppage. It was instead one Camacho Jr. was about to engineer himself, a wound self-inflicted. It was, for a boxer, as far from macho as one can possibly get.
It's true that there had been a head-butt; an accidental one in Round 5. However, the cut it produced above Camacho Jr.'s eye appeared to be manageable; of more concern to Camacho Jr. in that moment was not the blemish itself but rather what it did to his opponent, Jesse James Leija. Now, you see, Leija was all of a sudden invigorated and shifting the momentum. He poured it on. He sensed Camacho Jr. wanted out. 'We're going to find out what Héctor Camacho Jr. is made of tonight,' said HBO's Larry Merchant, and it would be no stretch to say Leija was probably thinking the same.
New to a crisis, the unbeaten Camacho Jr. had now lost control of both Leija and his own plan, and in Round 5 landed only two punches. On the retreat, he was even at one point admonished by the referee, Steve Smoger, for holding the top rope, often a sign of a boxer ill at ease.
By the end of the round, there was no longer any doubt. 'I can't see,' Camacho Jr. said in his corner, attributing his loss of vision to the accidental head-butt. 'It's all blurry.'
Though cajoled by the doctor to carry on, Camacho Jr. looked everywhere but at Leija and was reluctant to start Round 6. He knew as well as anyone that with just five rounds completed he had a narrow lead, and that the decision, should the fight end now, might yet bump his record to 33-0. He couldn't be quite so sure if it continued.
With the fighter's mind made up, Smoger leaned out of the ring to tell the commission, 'We have to go to the cards,' and seemed exasperated by it all. Then, when he said, 'He claims he can't see,' the cynicism and contempt was palpable, impossible to hide.
Camacho Jr., meanwhile, listened to the boos and rehearsed his lines. As his gloves were removed, he could be seen checking out his face on the big screen, perhaps hoping the cut would appear more significant when magnified than it felt to touch, having now stopped bleeding. He then chose to wear sunglasses for his post-fight interview, not to hide any deformation, but to conceal the reason he had quit and protect it from judgement.
'This is boxing,' said Leija. 'When you get cut, you bleed. He was fine. I heard the doctor say, 'You're good to go.''
Héctor "Macho" Camacho Jr. (right) and his father, seven-time world champion Héctor "Macho" Camacho Sr., pose in February 2001, just five months before Camacho Jr.'s infamous night against Jesse James Leija.
(RHONA WISE via Getty Images)
Dec. 20, 2019: Eighteen years after the son of Héctor 'Macho' Camacho searched for a way out of a tough fight, Julio Cesar Chávez Jr. went through the same thought process and book of excuses in Phoenix, Arizona. Sporting a bleach blonde and bubble-gum blue hairdo, Chávez Jr. was by this stage of his career content to pose as a fighter and collect money rather than live as a fighter and collect titles. Not just that, he had entered a super middleweight fight against Daniel Jacobs both heavy and uninspired. He had also repudiated the need for drug testing, meaning he and Jacobs ended up in Phoenix, where the testing was a little less stringent and Chávez Jr. felt more comfortable.
As for the fight itself, Chávez Jr. had a go early, landed a few right hands, then started getting bloody and bored. By Round 5, in fact, the look on his face was that of a child wanting to go home, an image with which his father, sitting ringside, was apparently familiar. His father, the great Julio César Chávez, was wearing the same red headband he himself used to wear into battle, and between rounds was caught on camera shaking his head and then burying it into the palm of his hand. It was almost as if Chávez Sr., a three-weight world champion, knew what was going to happen next. It was almost as if what happened next would be more shameful than everything that came before it.
In the Chávez Jr. corner, they conferred and got their stories straight. There was blood inside the Mexican's nose, which could have been broken, and there was a cut by his left eye, which had been caused by a head-butt. Yet wouldn't it be better, Chávez Jr. thought, to say that his hand and not his nose was broken? A hand, after all, is more important than a nose in a fight. 'Do you want to continue?' asked the referee, Wes Melton, sensing what everybody sensed. 'OK,' he said, upon getting no response. 'I'm calling it.'
It had by then become the preferred way for Chávez Jr. to cut short the mission and expedite his journey home. He had done the same in 2015, against Andrzej Fonfara, when he complained of a knee injury between Rounds 9 and 10, having been knocked down in the ninth. In fact, twice Chávez Jr. has been stopped as a pro and both times he was the one to call the stoppage and decide that enough was enough. Which is perhaps why the fans in Phoenix showered him with cans of beer and other projectiles as he scurried away from the ring that night. It is perhaps also why he struggled to look his father in the eye on the way out.
Julio César Chávez Jr.'s decision to quit against Daniel Jacobs nearly ignited a riot inside Phoenix's Talking Stick Resort Arena.
(Manuel Velasquez via Getty Images)
'It's an enviable thing, to be able to receive your identity from your father,' wrote Marilynne Robinson in "Gilead," and to some extent that is true. In some lines of work nepotism opens more doors than wounds and tends to be viewed as only a privilege. It creates job opportunities and it offers a degree of comfort which means the essentials are not so essential. It also reduces the desperation and urgency which fuels everybody else, leaving the spawn of the rich and famous with time, space and bountiful options.
On the flip side of that is the neglect. This is more common in instances of proper fame, and more common in certain professions, but it is part of the deal nonetheless. If you want pretty things, and you want opportunities, there is still a price to pay even for those who believe they can afford everything.
In boxing, the price to pay is not so much neglect as a softness; something no boxer wants. After all, to be born to a famous fighter is to be born into a kind of privilege at odds with what drove that famous fighter to success in the first place. It is, in other words, counterproductive for a boxer to take to boxing from a position of comfort or, indeed, softness. They instead need to be hard, history suggests. They need to have had it hard and for hardship to now galvanize them. Otherwise, it just won't work. Otherwise, you get a boxer unaccustomed to hardship and therefore ill-equipped when things get tough. You get Héctor Camacho Jr. in Round 5. You get Julio César Chávez Jr. in Round 5.
That is not to say these men are soft by everyday metrics, only the standards by which we judge boxers; these warriors, these gladiators. In that realm — and only that realm — they are soft, or at least softer than their fathers. They look for a way out because they know there is one, whereas their fathers, led by ignorance and empty bellies, had no idea that stopping was even an option.
In addition to this softness, there are particular pressures boxing's nepo babies must face. There is the pressure to be as good as their father, or not disgrace them, and there is the pressure to quickly get involved in fights that allow them to truly monetize their famous name. This rush toward the light invariably comes at the expense of their development and throws them into situations for which they are unprepared, leading to defeat and, alas, disappointed dads.
To be born to a famous fighter is to be born into a kind of privilege at odds with what drove that famous fighter to success in the first place. It is, in other words, counterproductive for a boxer to take to boxing from a position of comfort or, indeed, softness.
Many go that way, but not all of them. Some manage to carve out a decent career for themselves and treat the sport with the seriousness and respect it deserves. Some, like Tim Tszyu and Chris Eubank Jr., display a hard-to-explain toughness which is almost tantamount to defiance; a refusal to be seen as soft. For fighters like that, there is perhaps a compulsion to go even harder, just because they know the tradition and the stereotype.
'At first my father was reluctant to allow me to attend training sessions,' said Eubank Jr., whose father, Chris, was a WBO champion at both middleweight and super middleweight. 'He didn't understand why I was doing it and, of course, he knew just how hard the sport was. He didn't want me to experience the same sacrifices and hardships he had to go through during his own career.
'As time went on, though, he began to see just how seriously I was taking boxing and how much I was improving, and that was when he started to warm to the idea. He needed to know I wasn't just mucking around and that I had some potential.
'Obviously, when he said he didn't want me to box, it only made me want to box more. Like any young kid, I wanted to know more about this thing he told me to stay away from. I wanted to see if it was as extreme as he said it was.'
As a child, Eubank Jr. never even watched boxing. It was in fact only once he started training that he became interested in the likes of Muhammad Ali, Roy Jones Jr. and the Four Kings: Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns, Marvin Hagler and Roberto Duran. As for his dad, Chris Jr. did not need to see his dad in action to know that he had been a fighter. He was reminded of it every day. He was reminded of it again, too, when his dad finally let him go to the gym at the age of 15.
'I got badly beaten up on my first day at the gym,' Eubank Jr. recalled. 'The kid must have been 18 or 19 and probably had 20 to 30 amateur bouts to his name. Everybody in the gym assumed that because of my name, and because of who my father was, I would be able to walk into the gym and handle myself. But I was thrown to the wolves that day and paid the price. I got absolutely battered for three rounds, left the gym and made a pact with myself that something like that would never happen to me again.'
Chris Eubank Jr. alongside his Hall of Fame father, Chris Eubank Sr., ahead of April's second-generation fight against Conor Benn.
(Action Images via Reuters / Reuters)
Even if softness was not to blame, that baptism in Brighton was everything Chris Eubank, the boy's father, had feared. Though they shared a name, two of them, Eubank knew what hard looked like and he knew that his son didn't look like he did when he got into boxing. He didn't speak the same, he didn't live the same, he didn't wear the same clothes. In a word, he was privileged. The only burden he carried was the target on his back.
It was for that reason Eubank Sr. decided to send his son to live in America at age 17, convinced that the experience would add callouses to soft hands. 'The time I spent in Vegas is what has made me the fighter I am today,' said Eubank Jr., who sparred the likes of Zab Judah, Chad Dawson and Montell Griffin while out there. 'I spent about four years there in total and worked with some of the best trainers and fighters in the world. I started off with Mike McCallum and then worked with Floyd Mayweather Sr. I learned so much from everybody who took me on the pads or spoke in my ear.
'My dad played a massive part in coming to that decision. He knew it would be better for me to go to America as an unknown, with no pressure, in order to learn my trade away from the spotlight.
'But I wasn't with my family or friends, and that is always tough. I also didn't know a single soul out there to begin with. I just kept thinking that if I was able to survive that experience and come out the other side a better boxer and man, it would have been worthwhile. In boxing terms, I knew I'd be on another level to other young prospects when I returned to England.'
Today, similar thoughts run through the head of super lightweight Emiliano Vargas. He is not only one of the brightest prospects in the sport but also happens to be the youngest son of Fernando Vargas, a former IBF and WBA super welterweight champion.
'My father never really thought I would box,' said Emiliano, who had 130 amateur bouts and was a seven-time national champion. 'He thought I'd pick it up and leave it alone. I was just the chubby kid who liked to eat.
'We opened a boxing gym and one thing led to another. A couple of amateur fights in I'm starting to take this really seriously and winning big tournaments. Now here we are.
'It's a beautiful dynamic, man. I love my father to death. He never had a father so this is special for him. He's kind of living through my eyes — how it would have been to have his father at fights, and to watch him cut weight. I know it's big for him and it's big for me, too. I love having that relationship with my father. There's nothing better than winning with people that you love.'
Now 21, Vargas has reached the age at which distractions are both rife and legal. He is also the age his father was when, at 14-0, he stopped Mexico's Luis 'Yori Boy' Campas in seven rounds to win the IBF super welterweight title in 1998. Maybe, for Vargas (14-0, 12 KOs), that is the real distraction.
Emiliano Vargas poses with his father, Fernando Vargas, after defeating Juan Leon in a super lightweight bout this past May.
(Steve Marcus via Getty Images)
Since cutting short his date with Daniel Jacobs, an ever-softening Julio César Chávez Jr. has boxed five times. He has won three fights, lost two, and shared a ring with both Anderson Silva and Uriah Hall, two former mixed martial artists who, like Chavez Jr., have in recent years experienced something of an identity crisis.
No closer to his own answers, Chávez Jr., at 39, is still trying to figure out who or what he is, and knows only that he is not his father. He may have been blessed with his chin, and he may have won a world title in 2011, but time has shown not only the differences between father and son, but all that the son lacks: Hunger, discipline, persistence. Even toughness, that is a relative term. He showed it against Sergio Martinez, for instance, when almost evoking his father's last-gasp win against Meldrick Taylor, but after a while everything became too tough for Chávez Jr. Making weight became too tough. Doing drug tests became too tough. Finishing fights became too tough.
His next fight, on Saturday against Jake Paul, is easier than most, though still feels emblematic of Chávez Jr.'s petulant, rebellious phase. On one level it offers an adult child the opportunity to show a cosplayer that he was never cosplaying at all, and in turn prove his authenticity. On another level it brings Chávez Jr. closer to the kind of boxer, or character, he himself has become and puts him in the only kind of fight he can manage these days: A brief and ultimately meaningless one, with exit signs everywhere he looks.
Julio César Chávez Jr. (right) fights Jake Paul on Saturday night in Anaheim, California.
(Anadolu via Getty Images)
Of course, if the blonde-and-blue version of Chávez Jr. we saw for five rounds against Jacobs in 2019 is present on Saturday, he will be too much for Jake Paul. Flawed though he was, even that version of the Mexican would be enough to show any Disney child or YouTuber the difference between doing it and being it and reveal there are various degrees of 'softness' in this sport.
However, there can be no guarantee that Chávez Jr., a pro for 22 years, is still capable of hitting those same notes in 2025. What is more, he now fights someone whose privilege is a weapon yet to be used against him; someone whose privilege has built muscles, bought opportunities, and enabled him to call out Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez and Anthony Joshua with a straight face and no fear of repercussion.
In fact, while Chávez Jr. spent his entire career trying to prove himself worthy of a name, Paul (11-1, 7 KOs) has only ever had to prove that he is a boxer. Meaning: Just as their challenges are different, so too is their privilege. In the case of Chávez Jr., an already hard task was made harder by his privilege, whereas, for Paul, becoming a boxer has never been easier than it is today. It is now even an option for the softest of men. All one needs are gloves, a ring and an opponent happy to lose.