Julio Cesar Chavez Jnr says he’s training to defeat Jake Paul as payback to Mike Tyson, whom Chavez met as a boy when the legendary heavyweight champion visited Chavez’s Hall of Fame father.

“I love Mike Tyson and I’m the first guy to fight Jake after he beat Mike Tyson, so I want to take revenge for Mike Tyson,” Chavez Jnr told video reporter Elie Seckbach in a Monday interview at a gym in Maywood, California.

Chavez Jnr, 54-6-1 (34 KOs), is now 39 and has been mostly inactive during the past four years, with the exception of a July unanimous decision triumph over former UFC fighter Uriah Hall on a Paul-headlined card in Florida.

Paul, 11-1 (7 KOs), then defeated the 58-year-old Tyson by unanimous decision in Texas in November, drawing an $18.1 million live gate at AT&T Stadium and a Netflix audience of 108 million.

Paul will meet Chavez in a cruiserweight bout June 28 at Honda Center in Anaheim, California, atop a card that includes unified cruiserweight champion Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez versus Cuba’s Yuniel Dorticos.

Unlike concessions made to glove size and the round time in the Tyson fight, Paul is now under new regulations from the Association of Boxing Commissions to adhere to the rules of boxing or find his bouts classified as “celebrity fights.”

“People ask me if the contract says something – you have to lose, or wear big gloves – no, it’s a legit fight,” Chavez Jnr said. “I come to try to win. I’m training hard. I don’t sign things like that.

“Jake needs credibility with real boxing fans. Me too.”

A former middleweight titleholder, Chavez’s reputation has spiraled since his absent showing in a 2017 loss to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Two years later, he quit in the corner in a loss to former middleweight belt holder Daniel Jacobs in Phoenix, then brought visible shame to his legendary father by losing a 2021 split decision to UFC legend Anderson Silva.

“If I beat Jake Paul, I can fight again. I need to be at my best,” Chavez Jnr told Seckbach.

“It’s not about the payday. The thing is, the opportunity to beat him is the business of this fight. I’m fighting him because I want to beat him.”

Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.