In boxing terms, Julio Cesar Chavez Sr. had relatively modest dreams. Growing up in Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico, he and his nine siblings grew up in a two-room house, after the family worked their way out of the abandoned railway car in the yard where father Rodolfo conducted trains.

Chavez dreamt of buying his parents a new home, and after what he tallied as 200 street fights, found a hero in a local boxing gym, Juan Antonio Lopez, who would serve as his compass for how he would go about earning enough money to buy the home.

Chavez’s days as a child would begin early, as he would hit the streets to sell all three of the local newspapers, supplementing his morning roadwork with more miles on foot as he pocketed as many coins as he could. After school, he would go to the boxing gym and try to mimic Lopez, something he did so well that Lopez introduced him to his first pro trainer, Ramon Felix.

Chavez had promised his mother a house and a world championship. In the grand scheme of things, these are gargantuan ambitions, but relative to the proclamations made by young fighters today — and relative to the heights Chavez would ultimately achieve they were meager.

The family was already well-known in town. As the story goes, Rodolfo saved the town in 1974 when he commandeered a train full of explosives and guided it 10 miles out into desolate land. It would be hard to imagine someone achieving greater folk hero status than that, but by the time his son Julio would get a chance to achieve his dream in 1984, he already had. Although a song had been written about Rodolfo’s heroics, by then, five had been written about the 43-0 Julio who was set to become the world’s best super featherweight.

After Hector Camacho decided he’d outgrown 130 pounds and wanted to chase a bout against lightweight champion Livingstone Bramble, the WBC super featherweight title was declared vacant. In a three-year span, the belt had been held by five different men: Camacho, Bazooka Limon, Bobby Chacon, Rolando Navarrete and Cornelius Boza-Edwards. It was the most thrilling division in boxing, but one of extreme parity. That was about to change for a long while.

The two leading contenders in the WBC rankings were Chavez at No. 2 and Mario “Azabache” Martinez at No. 1. Martinez was coming off a fifth-round TKO victory over Navarrete and had built a following in Los Angeles, California, where many of the day’s best fights south of 135 pounds wound up. When the bout with Chavez was set for Sept. 13, 1984, Martinez was installed as a favorite, and his supporters were stationed in the front row of the Olympic Auditorium complete with giant “AZABACHE” banners.

Although Martinez was just 19 years old at the time of the bout and Chavez 22, “Azabache” felt like the established veteran. His hairy chest, mustachioed upper lip and receding hairline sprouting tufts of wild black hair only added to that assumption. As Martinez stormed Chavez in the opening round and backed him against the ropes, the mirage might have intensified, looking as though the favorite was going to bully the lesser-known underdog.

Chavez’s three previous appearances mustn’t have made much of an impression on the audience, or else they would have known how comfortable he would be in this situation. For the first four rounds, Chavez mainly bobbed, weaved and countered Martinez with his back against the ropes. Watching the fight through a modern lens, nothing about this is surprising, but contemporary reports on Chavez from the time tended to describe him as an “atypical” Mexican fighter. While Chavez today is the singular archetype of a Mexican fighter in style and substance, what a “Mexican fighter” was to the general audience was akin to what the shorthand “Mexican style” these days tends to mean: Someone who moves forward with the express purpose of being first and maybe third in exchanges, but never second.

The baby-faced Chavez matched Martinez’s violence and doubled down with elegance, picking his spots to occasionally turn the tables and walk him down. In some ways, it was the blueprint he would use to beat Meldrick Taylor years later, quietly landing the harder blows as the counterpuncher in chaotic exchanges, then capitalizing when the dents he made became cracks. By the end of the eighth round, those cracks were leaking so much blood that a streak of it was visible on Chavez’s back, its origins from one of three sources on Martinez’s face dripping down during a brief clinch.

With the $25,000 he earned after stopping Martinez, he had achieved what he’d set out to do. He had a world title, and exactly enough money for a two-story house for his mom, Isabel, and the land the abandoned railroad car once sat on.

As he arrived home in Culiacan, Chavez was surprised to find out he’d delighted more than just his own relatives.

“I arrived in Culiacan and all of Culiacan was waiting for me at the airport, walking all over the city. It was something I will never forget. It changed my life. From then on I no longer had any privacy. It was something very difficult for me but something very beautiful,” Chavez would tell ESPN. “It was the most important day of my life as a fighter.”

Perhaps as a subtle nod to his father’s apocryphal heroics, Chavez’s return to the ring would be on Jan. 1, 1985 in Mexico City in an “exhibition bout” (one that is now considered a part of his official record) against Manny Fernandez in support of the victims of a gas explosion outside of the city in November. It would be the first of many exhibition bouts mid- and post-career for Chavez, who well prior to the trend of such bouts — ironically boosted by the entry into boxing by the likes of Jake Paul, who faces Julio Jr. on Saturday — saw value and entertainment in such offerings.

After stopping Ruben Castillo in six rounds at The Forum in Inglewood, California, in his first title defense, Chavez had garnered attention in the CBS towers in New York City. In 1985, Mort Sharnik was, at least according to a New York Times ranking that year, the most powerful executive in boxing, making the calls on programming that aired on cable across the country with more regularity than any other major network. A former journalist himself, Sharnik not only had a sharp eye for talent, but a knack for storytelling and platforming personalities who would resonate with a broad audience. In recent years, with his assistance, Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini and Camacho had become mainstream superstars.

Sharnik had been instrumental in bringing Salvador Sanchez, the most recent Mexican idol, to a broader audience in the United States. He’d said that he’d waited until Sanchez had Danny “Little Red” Lopez, an English-speaking foe, before he did that. Chavez now had one of those before him in the form of Roger Mayweather, the top-ranked 130-pounder who had just destroyed Kenny Baysmore with a right hand so vicious that Marv Albert exclaimed “Baysmore just landed right on his forehead.”

Sharnik told The Times’ Michael Katz leading up to the fight that Chavez had “the potential to be as big as Roberto Duran or Alexis Arguello.” As big a star as he would become, at that point, Chavez was living in his parents’ home as their dream house was being built, and he had no additional money to spare.

“He’s a handsome kid with a certain marvelous confidence,” Sharnik told Richard Hoffer of the Los Angeles Times. “But subdued. So persistent and implacable. He just keeps coming.”

As tantalizing as Chavez’s skillset and prospective marketability were, Sharnik was originally tempted by the venue the bout was set to be in. Chavez and Mayweather were originally scheduled to face off in a bull ring in Tijuana, but the American accepted $10,000 less to not fight in Mexico, and the bout was moved to the Riviera in Vegas. Whether in a bull ring or a ballroom, Sharnik knew he wanted Chavez on his airwaves nonetheless.

Chavez’s national television debut would take place on July 7, 1985, and would end just minutes after the opening bell rang. After a pensive first round of watching Mayweather’s telephone pole jab come at him and assessing the strength and timing of his right hand, Chavez found his own right hand in the second round and wobbled Mayweather immediately. Though the first blow wouldn’t be called a knockdown, the second one would. Chavez wouldn’t relent, with Mayweather dropping to the canvas due to his own instability once more before the second and final knockdown was scored, prompting referee Richard Steele to wave the bout off.

“This kid has punching power we don’t see,” Steele said after the bout, something that perhaps stuck in his mind as Taylor swayed before him in the closing moments of his bout against Chavez six years later.

At the beginning of the bout, blow-by-blow commentator Tim Ryan described Chavez as “one of the bright young stars in the sport,” a description generally given to hopeful but unproven talents. By the end of the night, Ryan had declared “this young man is for real,” and the broader praise would even exceed that.

Seldom in boxing history has a fighter garnered praise so lofty so quickly after their mainstream debut, and in even rarer cases have they wound up justifying — and maybe even exceeding — that praise as quickly or as thoroughly as Chavez did. By the end of the night, writers were calling Chavez one of the best pound-for-pound talents in the world.

Not only that, the greatest to ever do it was seated ringside that night and gave a ringing endorsement.

“He was wonderful,” said Sugar Ray Robinson.

While he’d conquered the boxing world and earned the adoration of the brightest minds and finest operators on the planet, Chavez’s thoughts were still close to home, as they’d always been. Since he didn’t expend a ton of effort in dispatching Mayweather, he chose not to shower and quickly changed so he could be in the crowd to watch his first boxing idol, Juan Antonio Lopez. Lopez would score the last big win of his career over Dana Roston in a walkout bout.

Those two nights, in Los Angeles and in Las Vegas, would mark the beginning of an era that, in part, belonged to him. The win over Martinez was the first of many world title fights for Chavez that would occur on Mexican Independence Day weekend, which would become a formalized boxing tradition. His win over Mayweather was, at least in some people’s books, the beginning of a reign as the pound-for-pound best, and as one of boxing’s most visible stars in the United States. This was new territory for a Mexican fighter, a path that would be fruitfully travelled down by Oscar De La Hoya and Canelo Alvarez in coming generations.

The Chavez legacy is still felt today, in the form of his everlasting influence and shadow, but also in physical presence. Chavez is now one of Mexican television’s most prominent broadcasters, and is seated ringside for most major bouts, giving his analysis, and sometimes blessing to the sport’s current stars — the way Robinson did for him from the crowd. His name, the family name, commands instant respect and attention, something that can be profited off even today, as his son prepares to face Paul this weekend.

In 2015, 31 years after the “most important night of his career,” Chavez organized a three-round exhibition bout against Mario Martinez. Together, they donned trunks resembling the ones they wore that night, T-shirts and headgear, and traded blows for nine minutes to the delight of hundreds of fans at the Parque Revolucion in Culiacan. The proceeds went to Chavez’s foundation in support of youth addiction — the biggest fight he ever won personally, and the one his father never quite could.

Off in the skyline of the city, one could see the Chavez mansion, his whole purpose for fighting in the first place. Two years later, he would transform the house itself into a rehabilitation center, the crowning achievement of his second act in life.

"I have very fond memories [of the house], and at the same time, very sad ones,” Chavez told MDZ Online. “With a heavy heart, I didn't want it to be a clinic, but seeing all the problems in Culiacán, so many people asking me for help, and many people asking me to open a clinic here, I said, 'Why not put it in my house?'"