Chavez Jr-Vera II possible for February

By Boxing News - 10/11/2013 - Comments

chavez777By Dan Ambrose: The rematch between former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (47-1-1, 32 KO’s) and Brian Vera (23-7-3, 14 KO’s) won’t be taking place in December after all. It seems that HBO doesn’t have a date for the rematch in December, so Bob Arum of Top Rank Promotions will be moving the fight to February of next year in Texas, according to RingTV.

Arum is in talks with Vera’s promoter Artie Pellulo and he hopes to have the fight date ironed down by next week. Chavez Jr. is okay with fighting in Vera’s home state of Texas, because he’s got a large fan base there himself and has previously fought there against Jermaine White, Peter Manfredo Jr., Andy Lee and Marco Antonio Rubio.

Arum said to RingTV “I talked with Chavez. He and his father came to see me. They want that fight. Unfortunately, HBO’s budget doesn’t permit it for this year. So we’re looking for a date in February, where we’ll get it done.”

Chavez Jr’s 10 round unanimous decision win over Vera month was a controversial one with most people seeing Vera as having done more than enough to deserve a victory. The judges scored it 98-92, 96-94 and 97-93.

Although Arum came out and said that he felt that the judges made the right decision in giving the decision to his fighter Chavez Jr., this did nothing to change the opinions of the massive amounts of fans that thought that Chavez Jr. had been given what you’d call a gift decision by the judges.

Initially, Chavez Jr. said he had no reason to give Vera a rematch, because he thought the fight was a clear for himself, but eventually he changed his mind about it and agreed to fight Vera again. It’s unknown what made Chavez Jr. decide to fight Vera again.

It could be that Chavez Jr. watched the fight and saw how poorly he had looked or maybe he saw how the media felt about it and released that there was no way for him to walk away from the fight without agreeing to fight Vera again.

Vera and Chavez Jr. were supposed to originally fight each other at 162 lbs., but Chavez Jr. decided he needed to move the weight up because he couldn’t make that weight. Eventually, he decided 173 lbs. was a weight that he could make without draining himself. However, Chavez Jr. terribly drained of water weight the day before the fight, and he appeared slow and sluggish during major portions of the fight the next day. Chavez Jr. chose not to have himself weighed by the HBO staff, so it’s difficult to know how heavy he was when he stepped inside the ring to face Vera. But based on the size differences between the two fighters, Chavez Jr. looked at least 15-20 pounds heavier than Vera, if not more. Chavez Jr. looked like a cruiserweight fighting a middleweight.

Vera ended up throwing more punches than Chavez Jr. according to CompuBox in out-landing him 176 to 125. He also landed more power shots with a 109 to 98 advantage.



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