JULIO CESAR CHAVEZ Jr. KO9 TOBIA LORIGA

Although Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. did what was expected of him and stopped Italian champion Tobia Loriga in Saturday’s PPV main event there was the sense of something missing.

The commentary by Nick Charles and Wally Matthews made reference to Chavez seeming to lose concentration. His intensity-level lapses. When he has an opponent apparently on the verge of being stopped he backs off.

Loriga was game and durable but it was worrying to see the way he got Chavez on the ropes and hit him with right hands. Of course, one reason Loriga was picked as an opponent was because he is known to be seriously lacking in punching power, so Chavez was never in danger. Still, Loriga was probably allowed to become more audacious than Chavez should have permitted.

On the plus side, Chavez showed improvement from his last performance, when he stopped Jose Celaya in the eighth round of a fight that proved to be much more difficult than anticipated. On Saturday night he moved nicely and had a relaxed look, and there were times when he slipped and dodged punches quite well.

Yet Chavez several times allowed Loriga back into the fight after having his man hurt. This was especially the case in the second round, when a right hand dropped Loriga heavily, but Chavez failed to close the show, much in the way he let Celaya off the hook after dropping him in round two.

Chavez seemed to be fighting in fits and starts. He stayed in control of the fight but I thought that closure could — perhaps should — have been applied long before the ninth-round finish although when Chavez stumbled and hurt his right ankle in falling awkwardly in the seventh round it probably allowed Loriga to linger a little longer.

I thought that Chavez’s late-round body attack in the eighth took something out of Loriga, who seemed to be feeling the pain as he headed back to his corner. With two rounds remaining, Chavez finally put together a sustained assault in the ninth, rocking Loriga with a right hand and then hammering him with some solid follow-up shots that included impressive-looking left uppercuts. The Italian boxer seemed to have had enough when he dropped to one knee, and although Loriga appeared to have misjudged the count I noticed he wasn’t complaining. He had put up a stubborn stand, did well to come back from the second-round knockdown but had, I think, simply reached the limit of his endurance.

So, it was a good finish by Chavez — it was just that, after the way he blasted Loriga to the canvas in the second round, I thought it could have been achieved earlier.

Of course, Chavez is still learning at the age of 22, after scant amateur experience, and to be fair I did think a win around the eighth or ninth round was more likely than an early ending. Nevertheless, I was left with the impression that Chavez was making hard work of things. He got the job done, true — but not in a manner that was entirely satisfying.