Chavez gets shot against world champ

Dean Juipe

Thursday, Aug. 9, 2001 | 10:15 a.m.

He takes his listener by surprise, articulating his past with a heartfelt delivery.

Jesus Chavez is not your average fighter, nor your everyday professional boxer with a criminal record.

He's bright, glib and respectful, and very much mindful of an earlier mistake that spiraled into a career-threatening morass of legal issues.

"A good deal of who I am now is the result of the struggle I've had to reach this point," said the man who will take on World Boxing Council junior lightweight champ Floyd Mayweather Jr. Oct. 6 at the Paris Las Vegas. "But I'm honored to be here and glad to finally have a chance against a world champion."

Chavez, who was in Las Vegas for one night this week, has been the WBC's mandatory challenger at 130 pounds since March of 1998. The long delay in getting him into a title fight was a spin-off of a single bad decision he made as a 16-year-old living in Chicago.

"I did something really stupid," he said. "I was involved in an armed robbery."

Serving as a lookout outside a grocery store, Chavez was an accomplice in a crime that eventually would net him a prison term of 7 1/2 years. It was the only time he took part in a robbery and he called getting caught "quite a deterrent."

He served 3 1/2 years.

"I didn't have any reason to do it," he said. "I was working two jobs and even had two checks in my pocket. I didn't have any reason to get involved."

Upon release from prison he was deported to his native Mexico, where his Americanized upbringing made him the target of physical and verbal abuse. Looking for a new life and anxious to begin a career in boxing, he illegally re-entered the United States in 1994 and settled in Austin, Texas.

Everything was fine until he applied for a driver's license in 1997.

"I was nervous going in because I didn't have the proper (U.S. citizenship) documentation," Chavez said. "I guess they sensed it and they called the INS.

"At the end of the year, I was deported again."

He was 22-1 when he was sent back to Mexico and had beaten such noteworthy foes as Louie Espinoza, John Brown, Wilfredo Negron and Troy Dorsey.

In the next three years he added 10 victories to his record while fighting almost exclusively in Mexico against lesser opposition. Finally, in October of last year, the INS granted him the pardon he had petitioned for shortly after his second deportation.

"They tried to be helpful and were very honorable," he said of the Immigration & Naturalization Service. "I was able to re-enter the United States in January."

He has since posted three victories, including one over Juan Arias on a card shared with Mayweather in Grand Rapids, Mich., in May, and is 35-1 with 24 knockouts as his title shot arrives.

"There was a law passed in 1996 that seems stupid to me and needs to be expunged," Chavez said of a regulation that led to him being deported a second time in spite of holding a job and being a de facto American citizen. "If I become a world champion people will know my story and I can turn this into a cause. The law will get more attention if I can get more people involved."

Yet he faces a difficult challenge in taking on Mayweather, who some fans and observers feel is all but unbeatable.

"I think we'll have classic boxer vs. brawler fight," Chavez said. "To be the man you have to beat the man, and that's what I'm here to do."

Chavez, 28, is a longtime North American Boxing Federation champion whose only loss was by split decision to Carlos Gerena in his fifth professional fight. No betting line has been posted to date on his fight with Mayweather, yet Chavez figures to be an underdog with a legitimate shot due to the fact he hits hard and Mayweather is known to have sensitive hands.

"Floyd has been complaining about his hands for a long time now," Chavez said. "He might even be putting stuff like that out there just to throw people off.

"But I'm a fighter with a hard head and a solid body. If he hurts his hands in the fight, he's definitely going to be in trouble."

Chavez will train in Houston for the fight, which will be held in a 6,000-seat ballroom within the Paris Las Vegas resort.

"Jesus will apply so much pressure on Mayweather that he'll force him to fight," said Chavez's co-manager, Lou Mesorana. "I think Floyd might try to come right out and try to whack Jesus, but he could also get on his bicycle and turn it into a tactical fight.

"But the name of the game is fighting, and, yes sir, this is going to be a good fight."