By Dan Ambrose: Julio Cesar Chavez Jr’s strength and conditioning coach Memo Heredia isn’t worried in the least about him making the 164 ½ pound catch-weight limit for his fight against Golden Boy Promotions star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez on May 6 on HBO PPV. Heredia says the 30-year-old Chavez Jr. is at 181 lbs. right now, and he’s not far from the catch-weight limit of 164.5lbs for his fight against the 26-year-old Canelo at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Heredia points out that Chavez Jr. made the 168 lb. limit for his last fight in December against Dominick Britsch, and he feels he’s going to make the weight for the Canelo fight too. If Chavez Jr. does fail to make weight, he’ll be required to pay $1 million per pound that he comes over the limit.
Some boxing fans think Chavez Jr. should come in 3-5 lbs. over the 164.5lb limit, and just pay the extra money so that he can have a better chance of winning the fight. But that’s not what Heredia and Chavez Jr. plan on doing. They believe they can make the weight comfortably and still be strong enough to win the fight.
“164.5 is not going to be a problem,” said Heredia to Fightnews.com about the Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. fight. “It’s not going to be a problem at all because we’re doing it with time and I’m an expert in making sure fighters make weight. And obviously yes, it’s a million dollars that nobody would want to pay.”
There’s still a little over two months to go before the May 6 Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight. With Chavez Jr. already 16 ½ lbs. away from the 164.5 lb. limit, he’s going to make it easily. Chavez Jr. only has to lose maybe 5 pounds to get within 11 lbs. of the catch-weight limit. Chavez Jr. can then dehydrate the remainder of the weight.
It’s refreshing how open Chavez Jr. and Heredia are about his current weight. Canelo is different. He doesn’t talk about his weight, even when asked. He doesn’t reveal it. Canelo’s fight night weight isn’t revealed any longer before his fights. I’m talking about Canelo’s rehydrated weight. It’s not revealed by HBO like it used to be. On May 6th, it’s probable that Chavez Jr’s fight night weight will be shown by HBO but not Canelo’s. It really doesn’t matter. It can be left blank.
If Canelo doesn’t have the talent to beat Chavez Jr, then it doesn’t matter how much he weighs on the night of the fight. I do think that Canelo will have a slight weight advantage of 5-10 lbs. over Chavez Jr. on the night of the fight. If Chavez Jr. loses more weight in training camp and gets down to the low 170s, I think he’ll be outweighed by Canelo, who I believe will come into the fight from 180-185, which I believe is the normal range for his fights nowadays.
I don’t know how Canelo has been able to take off so much weight to get down to 155 and 154 for his past fights, but he’s able to do it somehow without it hurting him physically. The good news for Canelo is he won’t have to take that much weight off for the Chavez Jr. fight on May 6. At the most, I see Canelo dehydrating 20 lbs. from 185 to get down to the 164.5 lb. catch-weight limit for the fight. Canelo will then likely rehydrate up to around 185 on the night of the fight, and possibly enjoy a 10lb weight advantage over Chavez Jr.
“Right now he’s 180-181 because he’s been training,” said Heredia about Chavez Jr.
An in shape Chavez Jr. could make for a very difficult fight for Canelo. If Chavez Jr. is able to fight hard for 12 rounds, and fight with the momentum that he did in round 12 against Sergio Martinez, then we could see a beaten up Canelo on May 6. Canelo hasn’t fought too many fighters during his career that took the fight to him. Most of the guys that Canelo has fought have been ones in which they stayed on the outside and let him be the aggressor.
When Canelo has fought guys with power that pressured him, they were generally very slow fighters like Alfredo Angulo and James Kirkland. Canelo hasn’t been matched by his promoters at Golden Boy against fighters with speed and power like Jermall Charlo. It would have been interesting if Golden Boy had matched substituted Jermall Charlo for either Kirkland or Angulo in the last few years to face Canelo.
The fact that Golden Boy didn’t let Charlo fight Canelo makes you wonder if they have confidence in their fighter that he can beat quality fighters rather than guys that on the downside of their careers and no longer fighting like they used to. When Canelo does fight talented guys like Mayweather, they’re a lot smaller than him, and he enjoys a big weight advantage.
Canelo won’t have a big weight advantage over Chavez Jr., but it is a fight involving him facing a guy from the past. Chavez Jr. is not a truly relevant fighter in the super middleweight division. He’s not been mixing it up with the top contenders in the 168lb division during the last three years. He’s been facing fringe level fighters like Marcos Reyes, Brian Vera and Dominik Britsch. The one fight where Chavez Jr. fought a good opponent was against light heavyweight Andrzej Fonfara in 2015, and he lost badly to him. Chavez Jr. complained after the fight that Fonfara was too big for him. The reality was Fonfara was the same size as him, but he had too much punching power.