Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. signs with Al Haymon

In a move that has been expected for a little bit of time now, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. has just signed with highly influential advisor, Al Haymon. Obviously this has to be a little to the chagrin of Bob Arum, who has had an adversarial relationship with Haymon ever since Floyd Mayweather defected from Top Rank several years ago to team up with the former music promoter. Arum has always suspected and blamed Haymon for masterminding that defection.

Here, though, it seems that Arum isn't tremendously concerned over this latest move as he's suspected that it was going to happen. "We expected this. But we're in court and dealing with it. Our position is he owes us one more fight. So give us one more fight, and then he's free, really free, to go do whatever he wants to do," Arum said in an interview with ESPN. Arum was then asked if he thinks he could work with Haymon to finalize the final contracted fight for Chavez Jr., to which Arum replied, "I'll deal with anyone for one fight."

Ultimately, this move comes after Chavez Jr. turned down multimillion dollar offers for a Gennady Golovkin fight, which would have also included a contract extension with Top Rank. Arum also had a deal on the table for Chavez Jr. to take on Carl Froch in a January HBO PPV, but clearly that fell apart too due to the rejection of the contract extensions.

Thus despite big name fights on the table for Chavez Jr., Bob Arum believes that Al Haymon interfered with his contracted fighter by convincing him to leave the offers on the table. Now it'll be interesting to see how this all plays out from here.

Will Arum and Haymon be able to put one fight together for Chavez Jr. to end his contractual obligation to Top Rank? If so, I'd have to imagine that Arum and Haymon would have conflicting interests as Arum will want to cash out on Chavez by throwing him in with a big name, and dangerous opponent, whereas Haymon will...well we all know what his fights tend to look like. Will Chavez Jr. instead dispute his contractual obligation in court, which could drag out his already long period of inactivity? We'll have to wait and see...