Chavez Jr. to face Vera at 168 on September 7th in Los Angeles, California

By Boxing News - 07/17/2013 - Comments

chavez922By Dan Ambrose: Tickets for the September 7th fight between former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (46-1-1, 32 KO’s) and #1 WBO, Brian Vera (23-6, 14 KOs) are going on sale this Friday, July 19th, for their September 7th fight at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California.

Dan Rafael is reporting that the fight will be staged at 168 lbs. in order to make it easy for Chavez Jr. to make weight, as he’s been out of the ring since last year when he was beaten by Sergio Martinez by a 12 round unanimous decision.

Chavez Jr. has put on a great deal of weight in the time out of the ring and there are questions whether he can even make 168 at this point even with drastic dehydrating to lose 20+ pounds.

Less than two weeks ago, Chavez Jr. was photographed sporting a pot belly at his brother Omar Chavez’s fight against Charlie Navarro on July 6th, and that kind of belly isn’t likely going to be lost in two months.

Chavez Jr’s pot looked like a three month pot belly and that’s with massive amounts of aerobic workouts. Dehydrating is fine, but Chavez Jr. isn’t going to be able to dehydrate the belly he put him. That thing is still likely going to be there when he steps inside the ring against the #2 WBO, #2 WBC, Vera.

It may not matter because Vera is a beatable guy, especially if Chavez Jr. is weighting close to 200 against him. If he’s able to dehydrate 20+ pounds to make 168 and then rehydrate, we could see Chavez Jr. weighing in the 190s by the time he faces Vera on September 7th.

That’s a lot of weight for someone like Vera to be dealing with. Vera is usually the heavier guy in his fights, but he’d be at a big weight disadvantage in this one and I think it might not matter if Chavez Jr. is lugging around a flabby stomach around the ring.

What’s interesting is that Chavez Jr. reportedly has plans on moving back down to 160 lbs. after this fight. That’s going to be interesting to see, because Chavez Jr. was barely making weight before his long layoff, and I think it’s pretty clear that he’s out-grown the middleweight division. It looks like Chavez Jr. doesn’t want to leave the 160 lb. division for some reason, perhaps because of his big weight advantage of his opponents after rehydrates.



Comments are closed.