Martinez survives, defeats Chavez to capture WBC middleweight title

On Saturday night, that and a healthy dose of 12th-round courage was all Sergio Martinez needed to reclaim what he believed was stolen from him nearly two years ago.

Keeping it simple and effective, the 37-year-old Martinez outboxed and dominated Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. at the Thomas & Mack Center, winning a 12-round unanimous decision and taking Chavez’s WBC middleweight title in the process. But not without a little late drama.

Dave Moretti and Adalaide Byrd had Martinez winning 118-109, and Stanley Christodoulou had Martinez in front 117-110.

"He fought a great fight, and he was tougher than I expected," Martinez (50-2-2) said of Chavez, who lost for the first time in 48 fights. "He showed great heart in the ring."

Martinez’s work nearly went for naught as Chavez caught him twice in the final round and knocked him down in a 40-second span. Twenty-two years earlier at the Las Vegas Hilton, his father, the legendary Julio Cesar Chavez Sr., trailed Meldrick Taylor on the scorecards and knocked him out with two seconds remaining.

"I tried to repeat history, but I couldn’t," Chavez said. "I was 20 seconds away from knocking him out."

Martinez closed a 2-1 betting favorite at the Wynn race and sports book. But Chavez clearly was the favorite among the sellout crowd of 19,186. Martinez promised to dominate, and he did just that, outboxing Chavez from the first round, constantly beating him to the punch, all the while taunting and mocking Chavez.

Jabs. Hooks. Uppercuts. Martinez put his entire arsenal into play, consistently scoring and frustrating Chavez, who wasn’t willing to engage him. His 1-2 of a right jab to the head and a left hook to the body was effective throughout.

A notoriously slow starter, Chavez quickly fell behind. But unlike his previous fights, in which he clearly was the superior boxer and could overcome the scoring, such wasn’t the case Saturday. Martinez wasn’t going to allow him to get untracked, and it wasn’t until the late rounds that Chavez, already battered and bleeding from the nose and the mouth, finally asserted himself.

"I started late," Chavez said. "I didn’t get started until the eighth round."

His trainer, Freddie Roach, implored him to get busy and not let Martinez dictate the terms of the fight. But Chavez struggled to do so until late in the fight.

Martinez fought a brilliant fight. But then he had a Mike Leach moment and decided to do something unconventional, which was to try to knock out Chavez in the 12th round instead of continuing to outbox him. Maybe Martinez was afraid the judges would stick it to him. Maybe it was a macho thing. Whatever it was, it wasn’t smart, and it nearly cost him everything.

"For 11 rounds it was a clinic, but he insisted on knocking (Chavez) out," Martinez’s promoter, Lou DiBella, said. "He almost wound up getting knocked out himself. The kid’s got a chin of granite, and he can punch. That last round was epic."

But in the end, Martinez had done more than enough to regain the title he had been stripped of nearly two years before by the WBC after he refused to defend the belt against Sebastian Zbik.

"It was a tough fight," Martinez said. "We are two professionals. If he wants a rematch and the public wants a rematch, we’ll do it."

On the undercard, Roman Martinez won a 12-round split decision over Miguel Beltran Jr. to claim the vacant WBO super featherweight title,

Beltran landed big punches throughout the fight, but Martinez was game and fought back to dominate the rounds he won. But in the 11th round, referee Russell Mora had a point deducted from Beltran for hitting behind the head after he had warned the Mexican fighter several times. That one-point deduction ultimately cost Beltran as the fight would have been a draw.

Contact reporter Steve Carp at scarp@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2913. Follow him on Twitter: @stevecarprj.