By Dan Ambrose: With former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (46-1-1, 32 KO’s) reportedly unable to make the agreed upon weight of 173 lbs. for his fight against middleweight Brian Vera (23-6, 14 KO’s) this Saturday night, Chavez Jr. will be weighed in separately from Vera today to see if he’s anywhere close to the 173 lb. limit for the fight.
Depending on how things go in this weigh-in, the weight for the fight will either be adjusted upwards or kept at the same limit of 173.
Chavez Jr’s promoter Bob Arum said via ESPN “We’re going to take a look at what fighters weigh [on Wednesday] and decide what the weight limit will be, so right now there is no determination on that. I know what Julio Sr. said, but I really believe that at the time he said it, he misspoke.”
Chavez Jr. said that the weight limit for the fight had been moved from 168 to 173, but it looks like Arum doesn’t think Chavez Jr. was right about that.
As far as today’s weigh-in goes, it’s going to be Chavez Jr. that weighs-in alone, not Brian Vera with him, according to ESPN. Vera isn’t the one that needs to weigh-in early, as he reportedly has no problems making the 168 lb. weight for the official weigh-in this Friday.
It makes no sense to include Vera in today’s weigh-in, because he’s not having problems making the 168 lb. limit.
Depending on how things go in today’s weigh-in with Chavez Jr., Arum will be meeting with Vera’s promoter Artie Pelullo to discuss the fight.
There’s no word about whether Vera would be getting more money to face Chavez Jr. at the higher weight of 173 lbs. That would be the logical conclusion. One would hope that Chavez Jr. will even be able to make 173, because that would be really sad if he couldn’t even make that weight.
The Chavez Jr. vs. Vera fight was initially supposed to take place at 162 lbs., but it’s been moved up 3 times from 164, 165 and finally 168. If it gets bumped to 173, it will be the 4th time the weight has been adjusted to accommodate Chavez Jr. And if he can’t even make that weight, then I don’t know what they’re going to do.
Having a middleweight face a cruiserweight is not ideal thing due to the danger involved to Vera. Anything over 175 is considered a cruiserweight, and it’s going to put Vera in a tough situation if he has to face Chavez Jr. with him that big. 173 is just the weigh-in weight, and not the weight that Chavez Jr. would come into the fight at.
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