By Dan Ambrose: Trainer Robert Garcia is giving the edge to Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (50-2-1, 32 KOs) for his fight against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 KOs) on May 6 on HBO PPV. While Garcia likes Canelo’s boxing skills and activity level in his career, he sees him as the smaller, weaker fighter of the two.
Garcia thinks that Chavez Jr. can win the fight if he comes in shape and is focused for the fight. It comes down to pride and defending the family name with Chavez Jr., says Garcia. He believes that with Chavez Jr’s size and power advantage, he’ll be able to beat the 5’9” Canelo.
Garcia also likes that Chavez Jr. can take a good punch. He feels he’ll be able to handle everything that Canelo throws at him. We saw in Canelo’s last fight against Liam Smith that he can be hit to the body. Smith was able to land a lot of hard body shots against Canelo, which caused him to need to back against the ropes to recover from the body shots. Chavez Jr. is more committed to throwing body shots than Liam Smith, and a bigger puncher. Chavez Jr. will be sure to try and take Canelo out with those kinds of shots.
Robert Garcia said this to Fighthype.com about his thoughts on the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight:
“It’s a huge fight,” said Garcia about the Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. contest. “It’s going to be one of the biggest fights since Pacquiao-Mayweather, and it could be a hell of a fight. They’re both Mexican. They both have that pride. They both want to win. It’s going to be pretty interesting to see the fight. Both of them are pretty hungry to get the win. Maybe Chavez wasn’t good in his previous fights, but for this one is about pride of the whole country. The last name, it means a lot. So I’m thinking he’s going to be in shape. If Chavez trains hard and focuses for a good 2, 2 ½ months of training camp, I give Chavez the edge, because he’s just the bigger guy. He’s way bigger. I’m sure he’s going to be stronger in the ring, and he can punch and he can take a punch. So I think he’s going to take everything Canelo throws, and it’s a 12 round fight. I give Chavez an edge,” said Garcia
Canelo, 26, has never really had to take a lot of punishment in any of his fights at the pro level. In Canelo’s fight against Miguel Cotto in 2015, Cotto mostly boxed him rather than slugged. The other guys that Canelo has fought either didn’t have any punching power or they were knocked out too quickly to land much of anything. Chavez Jr. could have a chance of hurting Canelo just by being able to stay in the fight by taking his shots, and then retaliating with his own.
It certainly helps Chavez Jr. that he’s a good body puncher, because that improves his chances of landing punches in the fight. Canelo moves his head a lot, and he’s hard to hit with power shots. Canelo is more vulnerable to jabs and body punches. Chavez Jr. has the longer reach. His jab is pretty good when he uses it. Chavez Jr. can take a couple of approaches to beating Canelo. He can choose to turn the fight in a grueling inside war like the one he imposed on Andy Lee in their fight in 2012 or he can try and box Canelo from the outside by using his jab to bust him up. Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Erislandy Lara both had a lot of success in jabbing Canelo from the outside.
Mayweather easily beat him in 2013. Lara should have beaten Canelo in 2014, but the judges working the fight gave it to Canelo by a 12 round split decision. Lara would have taken the judges out of the equation if he’d thrown more power shots, and if he’d stayed in the pocket. Chavez Jr. will definitely be spending a lot of time in the pocket trying to hurt Canelo, and wear him down with heavy shots. Canelo does not like to get hit, so I expect him to try and move to avoid the punishment.
“This sport is a business,” said Robert Garcia. “But for the fans and the boxing people, it does look a little bad that he [Canelo] vacated his title because he didn’t belong at 160, and now he’s fighting at 164 ½ against Chavez. It does [look bad]. At the end of the day, this is a business. He’s [Canelo] doing the best for him. His management team, his promoters, is doing a great job with him. I think it’s a smart move [to fight Chavez Jr. It’s very risky to go to 160 to fight Triple G when there’s more money against Chavez Jr., and maybe they see it as less risk. So they want to do the smart thing, and that’s a smart thing to do,” said Garcia about the Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. fight.
It looks very bad that Canelo is fighting Chavez Jr. instead of Gennady Golovkin. In the past, Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions said that he wasn’t ready to fight Golovkin at 160 because he hadn’t grown into the division. Now we’re seeing Canelo fight at 164.5 against a fighter that has rarely fought in the last five years of his career since losing to Sergio Martinez in 2012.
Many boxing fans already doubted the excuse given about Canelo not being big enough to fight Golovkin, because Canelo has looked huge in the ring in his last four fights. He also stopped being weighed by HBO Boxing after he re-hydrated. No one knows how much Canelo weighs anymore on the night of his fights. The only thing they can do is compare how much bigger he is than he was during the last fights where his fight night weight was revealed. To some, Canelo looks to be in the low 180s on the night of his fights. If that is the case, it means Canelo is a marvel at dehydrating to make weight for his fights.
Canelo won’t need to take too much weight off for the Chavez Jr. fight with the weight limit being 164.5. If Canelo really does weigh in the mid-180s for his fights nowadays, then he’ll still need to take off 20 pounds of water weight the week of the fight before the weigh-in. That’s a lot of weight for most fighters. Golovkin looks terrible just taking off 10 to 12 pounds to make weight.
I can’t imagine him having to take off between 20-30 pounds to get down to the 164.5lb catch-weight. Chavez Jr. might be in the same boat as Canelo though when it comes to taking off weight. Chavez Jr. has got to be in the 180s if not the 190s. Getting down to the catch-weight limit for this fight is going to be really difficult for Chavez Jr. unless he takes off muscle during training camp.
You hate to see fighters having to lose muscle rather than just fat and water weight to make weight, but in this case, I think Chavez Jr. will need to sacrifice some muscle, because his body is not suited to getting down as low as 164.5. Even getting to 168 is a huge ordeal for Chavez Jr. He doesn’t want to make the move to 175 to fight at light heavyweight, but I think Chavez Jr. is going to need to in the near future.
Chavez Jr. is having worse problems trying to make 168 than he was 160 years ago. He’s clearly outgrown the 168 pound division, which isn’t surprising because he was in his mid-20s when he moved up to that weight class. You would figure that by 30, Chavez Jr. would need to move up to light heavyweight. That’s a predictable move for a fighter that eats well, and lives well.
It’s interesting that Chavez Jr. is still trying to resist the move to 175 when it’s very clear that he needs to move up. Getting down to 164.5 for the Canelo fight is going to be very difficult for Chavez Jr. to do. Golden Boy Promotions obviously knows that Chavez Jr. is going to have issues making the 164.5lb limit, which is probably one of the reasons why they asked for the catch-weight for this fight. It gives Canelo a huge edge.
When asked if the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight is a bigger one for Canelo to be fighting than a fight against Gennady Golovkin, Garcia said, “Definitely it is Chavez Jr. It’s huge. I think it’s going to be huge. If they fight in Texas, they’re going to have 100,000 people. I think the Chavez-Canelo is bigger than Triple G,” said Garcia.
Garcia is right about Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. being a bigger fight than Canelo vs. Golovkin, but I don’t think it’ll be a bigger fight in the U.S. Canelo-Chavez Jr. is probably going to be a bigger fight in Mexico, but Canelo vs. Golovkin will be bigger in the U.S, I believe. Chavez Jr. is not someone that is too well thought of by the hardcore boxing fans in the U.S due to his lack of success with his career in the last five years.
The casual boxing fans aren’t familiar with Chavez Jr. because he’s not had his fights televised on HBO or major cable on a frequent enough basis in the last five years for him to remain a big name. In contrast, Golovkin has been fighting three times per year on HBO for the last three years, and he’s build up a big fan base with his many knockout wins. Chavez Jr. has been out of the picture for many years since losing to Sergio Martinez in 2012. That was a one-sided fight. The only round in which Chavez Jr. had any success was in the 12th when he stood in front of him and tried to slug. Chavez Jr. knocked Martinez down, causing him to badly injure his right knee. Martinez was able to get up and finish the fight on his feet, but his knee problem ended up shortening his career.
