Chavez 1, Alvarez 0.

A week before Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. do battle at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, their brothers took center stage and “Team Chavez” are off to a winning start in the “sibling rivalry”.

On Saturday, Omar Chavez stopped Ramon Alvarez in Round 2 before a raucous crowd at the Gimnasio Manuel Bernardo Aguirre in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico. The bout was scheduled for 10 rounds at middleweight.

With the win, Chavez improves to (36-3-1, 26 knockouts), while Alvarez falls to (24-6-2, 16 KOs).

This was a rematch of a September 2014 bout, which Alvarez won by 10-round unanimous decision. Eager to even the score, Chavez had recently approached Fernando Beltran, the head of Zanfer Promotions, about the possibility of a rematch.

Alvarez, one of Canelo’s older brothers, had won five of six fights since the Chavez setback, with the one loss coming by split decision to former three-time welterweight titleholder Antonio Margarito last August. Chavez, less active, had won three fights in a row.

The taller Chavez pressed the action from the opening bell, while Alvarez looked to counter. Both fighters connected, but it was Chavez who landed the telling blows.

Chavez closed the distance between the two in the second and, during an exchange, clipped Alvarez with a left hook. He then backed his opponent against the ropes and landed a series of right hands, the final one staggering Alvarez. Chavez followed up with two left hooks, prompting referee Ricardo Manjarrez to stop the fight at 2:05.

“We took advantage of the opportunity,” said Chavez after the fight. “When you train hard, the knockout will come. I knew I could knock him out, but I did expect a tough fight.”

Chavez then dedicated the fight to his older brother, Julio Jr.

“We trained together. He knows he can win his fight (against Canelo Alvarez) and he will win,” he said.

Welterweight Jaime Munguia remained unbeaten in the co-feature bout, winning a one-sided 10-round decision over Johnny Navarrete (33-9-1, 15 KOs). Scores were 100-90, 100-90, and 99-91 in favor of Munguia, who improves to 23-0 (19 KOs).

Junior lightweight Bekman Soylybayev (11-0, 4 KOs) won a hard-fought 10 round split decision over Samuel Gonzalez. One judge scored the bout 97-92 in favor of Gonzalez (13-5, 9 KOs), while the other two judges scored the bout 96-93 and 96-92 in favor of Soylybayev.

Former world bantamweight titleholder Irma Garcia (17-2-1, 3 KOs) defeated Judith Rodriguez (8-12, 5 KOs) by unanimous decision over 10 rounds.

Francisco A. Salazar has written for RingTV since October of 2013 and has covered boxing in Southern California and abroad since 2000. Francisco also covers boxing for the Ventura County (Calif.) Star newspaper, Boxingscene.com, and Knockout Nation. He can be reached by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @FSalazarBoxing

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