For more than four decades, Mexico has remained in Julio César Chávez's corner.
The former world champion survived defeats, addiction, family turmoil and years of public controversy without losing his place among the country's most beloved sports figures. During an interview promoting his new ViX documentary series, Chávez vs. Chávez, the 64-year-old boxing legend attempted to explain why that bond has endured.
"I honestly don't know. I swear to God," Chávez told this reporter when asked why Mexicans had continued to support him through both his triumphs and his darkest periods.
He then offered two possible explanations: his total commitment inside the ring and the accessibility he maintained outside it.
"Throughout my professional career, I always gave 100 percent in every fight," Chávez said. "Maybe it is because I have never denied anyone a photograph. It doesn't matter whether they are rich or poor. Even though it can be exhausting for me, I have never refused anyone a photo or an autograph."
Yet Chávez believes the relationship is rooted most deeply in what Mexican audiences witnessed during his fights and what they later saw in his recovery.
"I think it was my fights, and it was my recovery," he said. "A lot of people didn't give a damn about me anymore. However, today I have been 18 years without alcohol or drugs. I help many people who have the same problem that I have, and I have been able to help my children."
That complicated journey is at the center of Chávez vs. Chávez, a five-episode documentary series produced by N+ Docs and directed by Mexican journalist, author and filmmaker Diego Enrique Osorno. The complete series became available on ViX on Sept. 11 after its first episode aired on Las Estrellas.
The production was constructed around four extensive conversations with Chávez and takes him back to defining locations, including Culiacán, Tijuana, Las Vegas' MGM Grand Garden Arena, Mexico City's Estadio Azteca and a rehabilitation center.
Osorno is known for reporting on organized crime, political power and social conflict in Mexico. His previous screen work includes the Netflix documentary series 1994, which examined the upheavals that transformed Mexico during that pivotal year. His background gives Chávez vs. Chávez a perspective that reaches beyond a conventional sports biography.
Chávez admitted that agreeing to the project was not easy. He said Osorno and his team spent approximately two years trying to persuade him to participate.
"It was difficult," Chávez said. "But once I watched the first episode, then the second and the third, that is when it really crushed me emotionally."
The former champion described Osorno as "a very good person" and said the documentarian uncovered material that even he had never seen.
"Osorno had prepared things that I had never seen in my life," Chávez said. "Or maybe I had lived through them and didn't remember them."
This is what makes this documentary different from previous ones. The documentarist didn't simply ask Chávez to remember his life, but confronts him with evidence of a past that addiction sometimes made impossible for him to recall fully.
The series also examines Chávez as a Mexican cultural symbol, a status built during an undefeated streak that extended through his first 89 professional fights and culminated in events such as his 1993 victory over Greg Haugen before more than 130,000 spectators at Estadio Azteca.
But the affection he describes cannot be measured solely through records or championship belts. Chávez believes Mexican fans recognized themselves in his willingness to fight, fall and stand back up.
"I have always had the support of Mexicans and of my countrymen in the United States," he said. "God gave me that light, the ability to connect with people."
While much of Chávez vs. Chávez revisits the making of a national hero, Chávez's answer suggests that Mexico's loyalty was cemented after the cheering stopped. Fanswatched him lose control of his life, confront the damage and attempt to rebuild it publicly.
For Chávez, that recovery has become as important to his relationship with Mexico as anything he accomplished in the ring.
"I won many world championships," he said after discussing his work helping people with addictions. "But that is the greatest championship I have."
