By Chris Williams: It looks like Top Rank has made up their minds about who they want to match their fighter former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (46-1-1, 32 KO’s) against #1 WBO, #7 WBC, Brian Vera (23-6, 14 KO’s), according to El Golfo.
As for the venue, one could guess that Chavez Jr’s promoter Bob Arum will place the fight in Mexico or Texas where he would have a guaranteed huge crowd of Mexican fans that will gladly pay to see Chavez Jr. in high numbers despite his poor showing in his last fight against Sergio Martinez.
Vera, 31, is tailor-made for Chavez Jr. because he likes to slug it out and he’s got the size to give him tough fight unlike a lot of the smaller guys that Chavez Jr. has fought recently excluding Sergio Martinez. Vera rehydrates to the 180s and won’t be out-sized as much as guys like Andy Lee and Marco Antonio Rubio were when they fought Chavez Jr. when they fought him.
There’s been talk about this fight being a catch-weight fight. It’s still unclear whether that’ll happen or not, but my guess is it will because Chavez Jr. will likely struggle to get down from the 190s to face Vera at 160 the weight of the fight. taking off 20 pounds is hard enough, but when you start talking about taking off 30+ pounds, it’s just too much weight.
How much longer Chavez Jr. can keep pushing his body to fight in weight classes that it’s not designed to is the big question. A fighter Chavez Jr’s size should be fighting at light heavyweight or better yet cruiserweight. He’s even too big for super middleweight. He needs to be fighting at 175 lbs. against the likes of Bernard Hopkins, Chad Dawson and Nathan Cleverly instead of 160 lb. fighters.
Vera has won his last three fights, beating Sergio Mora, Serhiy Dzinziruk, and Donatas Bondorovas. Two years ago, Vera was easily beaten by Andy Lee in a rematch in losing by a lopsided 10 round unanimous decision. Vera does well against fighter that slug with him, so he should be in his element against Chavez Jr.
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