By Dan Ambrose: The rematch between former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (47-1-1, 32 KO’s) and Brian Vera (23-7, 14 KO’s) is set for March 1st. The fight will take place at super middleweight and will be staged at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas. According to Dan Rafael, Top Rank will have WBO featherweight champion Orlando Salido facing two-time Olympic gold medalist Vasyl Lomochenko as the co-feature bout on the card. That fight might end up being more interesting than the Chavez Jr-Vera rematch.
Chavez Jr. will need to do a much better job of making weight for this fight than he did last September when he couldn’t make the 168 lb. limit and had to have the weight raised to 173 lbs. in order for him to fight. For the rematch there will be a $250,000 penalty that Chavez Jr. will be stuck paying if he fails to make weight. Chavez Jr. made $2.5 million for the Vera fight last September at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
Chavez Jr. won the fight by a 10 round unanimous decision. But fans didn’t agree with the decision, and they booed loudly. It wasn’t just the fans at the StubHub Center who were unhappy with the decision. The boxing world didn’t agree with the decision, and it put Chavez Jr. in situation where he kind of had to give Vera a rematch in order to keep the respect of his fans.
“I told Chavez that he’s destroying his credibility with this weight nonsense,” promoter Bob Arum said to ESPN. “I told him, ‘Make the weight. Let me see.’ So I’m not shooting my mouth off about Chavez and his ability and this and that…He has to fight in the manner that people believe he’s capable of, like he looked when he beat Andy Lee.”
Well the problem that Chavez Jr. has is he’s no longer fighting in the 160 lb. division. The fact that he can’t even make 168 is a sad statement about him. It means that there’s going to be a point in the near future where he’ll be forced to move up to 175, and deal with guys that he’d be best to avoid like Sergey Kovalev and Adonis Stevenson.
Chavez Jr. is going to need to be matched carefully after the Vera fight, if he wins that one. Chavez Jr. looked terrible against Vera, and there’s no way that Arum can put him in with guys like Andre Ward and Carl Froch, because they’d beat him up. Chavez Jr. might be able to beat WBC super middleweight champion Sakio Bika and WBO champ Robert Stieglitz, but that’s about it.
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