By Dan Ambrose: Bob Arum of Top Rank is talking about Julio Cesar Chavez Jr’s September 7th fight against Brian Vera (23-6, 14 KO’s) as being an experiment to see if he can fight well at 168, and if he does well, he’ll stay at that weight. Chavez Jr., however, is saying something completely different.
He’s saying he’ll definitely be going back down to middleweight division after the Vera fight and he wants to recapture his WBC middleweight title that he lost to Sergio Martinez last September by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision loss.
Chavez Jr. told ESPN, “I will return to middleweight after this fight and will get my world title back.”
Arum said “[Chavez] wants to test at 168 and see if he is going to remain at super middleweight.”
Of the two, I have to go with what Chavez Jr. is saying because he seems to be pretty clear about not wanting to stay at super middleweight. I don’t know why he wouldn’t want to stay at this weight, because he probably should be fighting at light heavyweight or cruiserweight instead of middleweight or super middleweight.
Chavez Jr. looks like a human skeleton when he dehydrates to make weight for his middleweight fights, and when he rehydrates, he looks like cruiserweight.
The transformation from being a skinny, sickly looking middleweight for his weigh-ins to the cruiserweight-size fighter that he comes in after he rehydrates is pretty shocking. It’s like night and day. But what’s surprising is that Chavez Jr. is able to take off and put back on that much weight in a short period of time without it affecting his performance in the ring. He’s been very lucky thus far not to be weakened by taking off the kind of weight he does for his fights.
Chavez Jr. would be better forgetting about trying to get his title back from Sergio Martinez because I think he’s going to lose just like he did last time against Martinez. Who knows whether Chavez Jr. will even be able to make the weight to get down to 160? To be sure, he’s saying he’s going to do it, but when you’re moving 20-30 pounds of water weight, it’s quite possible that Chavez Jr. will finally be unable to make the 160.
The fight would probably still take place with Martinez, but Chavez Jr. could forget about winning the WBC middleweight if he were to get the victory. Also by Chavez Jr. not making weight it would pretty much tell him that he needs to move on and start fighting a little closer to his normal weight.
I say a little closer because Chavez Jr. wouldn’t be weighing 168 for his fights in that weight class. You could expect him to be in the 180s by conservative estimate but possibly in the 190s.
What I would hate to see is Chavez Jr. stubbornly persisting in trying to make 160 and failing each time. We’ve seen that with other fighters that don’t want to give up on a particular weight class due to the advantage that they get after they rehydrate, but eventually those fighters have to move up because their simply can’t make the weight.
Comments are closed.