By Chris Williams: Julio Cesar Chavez Sr said over the weekend that his son Julio Cesar Chavez Jr was interested in facing WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto in a fight at 160 for this December in New York.
Chavez Sr said that negotiations would be starting this week for a fight between them, according to Univision Deportes. However, it’s not a realistic fight that can happen because of Chavez Jr not having fought at 160 for the past two years.
Chavez Jr that for a big fight such as Cotto, he would get back down to 160, but it’s still hard to imagine that he’ll be able to make weight. Unless Cotto includes a huge weight penalty for Chavez Jr in case he comes in over the weight limit, which is very likely, we could see Chavez Jr miss the 160 pound weight by a wide margin.
Dan Rafael of ESPN addressed the Chavez Jr vs. Cotto rumors, saying “I think there’s a few problems; No 1, I don’t believe Chavez Jr can get down to 160, no matter what he says, because otherwise he would have been doing it for his recent fights. He has to prove that he can do it, and he hasn’t been able to do it for a long time. Even if it was a fight that he could do in terms of the weight, you still have the problems when Chavez Jr was talking about fighting Gennady Golovkin. It could have taken place earlier this month. He [Chavez Jr] has issues with his promoters Top Rank over the terms of his contract. They want an extension, but he doesn’t want to give an extension. They’re going to argue about that. Therefore, I don’t see it happening. And by the way, I don’t think Cotto has any interest in fighting Julio Cesar Chavez. He’s a much bigger man than Cotto.”
What Rafael says is true. There’s no way that Chavez Jr can get down to 160, and unless he agrees to fight Cotto at that weight, the fight’s not going to happen. The 5’7” Cotto can’t fight Chavez Jr at super middleweight because he’s too small to do that.
The only way those two can fight each other is if Chavez Jr melts down from the 190s to get down to 160 to make weight. At this point in Chavez Jr’s career, it might actually be dangerous for him to lose that much water weight to get down to 160. Besides the fact that he’d be too weak to fight, he could put himself in the hospital if he loses 30 pounds of water weight to make the 160 pound weigh-in weight for a Cotto fight.
Chavez Jr needs to stay in his own division, super middleweight, and try to fight guys in this weight class. He’s having problems even making this weight class, because he’s more of a light heavyweight now at 28.
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