By Salvador Rodriguez

Saturday night's performance by Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (45-0-1, 31KOs) left his trainer, Freddie Roach, convinced that their pre-fight strategy worked. Chavez won a twelve round unanimous decision over Marco Antonio Rubio at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas. Chavez was making the second defense of his WBC middleweight title.

Roach appeared to be a little surprised with Rubio's ability to take Chavez's hard punches. Chavez struggled tro make the middleweight limit, and weighed 181-pounds on the night of the fight, but kept a very steady pace until the end of the fight.

"He lacked a little bit of boxing in the fight. Julio is a good fighter, so the things that we did in the gym, I liked how it worked in the ring. I would just like to see him throw his jab more, use his distance. Rubio is a tough fighter, he took a lot of hard punches from Julio and the fight turned out as expected. Rubio is a fighter who hits hard and that makes him dangerous, but in the end everything turned out fine," Roach said.

Salvador Rodriguez covers boxing in Mexico for The Record.