By Dan Ambrose: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. both weighed in successfully at 164 pounds on Friday for their 164.5 pound catch-weight fight this Saturday night on HBO pay-per-view at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Canelo looked pretty stocky and almost at his fighting weight in coming at 164. The added 9 lbs. that he put on over his normal self-created 155 pound catchweight class seemed to suit him well.
Chavez Jr. didn’t look good in coming in at 164. He looked very thin, emaciated and stork-like in standing next to the much shorter and stockier Canelo. Chavez Jr. is likely going to gain back at least 20 pounds by Saturday night. It’s going to be a much different looking Chavez Jr. when he enters the ring. However, the incredibly 1000 calorie per day diet that Chavez Jr. has been on to get down to within striking distance of the 164.5lb catchweight could leave him weak tomorrow night. Getting down to the catchweight might have finished any chances Chavez Jr. ever had of beating Canelo. Chavez Jr. looked paper thin today. Unless he can gain back a ton of weight and not be weight drained tomorrow night, I think you can pretty much forget about him pulling off an upset to beat the younger 26-year-old Canelo. What a lot of boxing fans don’t realize is that Chavez Jr. has good skills when he wants to show them off. However, it might not be possible for Chavez Jr. to box Canelo if he’s drained for the contract catchweight for the fight.
Chavez Jr. agreed to the catchweight. He might have still gotten the Canelo fight if he told Golden, ‘No dice. I’m not agreeing to drain down to 164.5.’ If you at the middleweight division, there aren’t many safe fights for Canelo that will give him a good payday. There’s Gennady Golovkin, Daniel Jacobs and Jermall Charlo. Those are the best known fighters in the 160lb division right now. I think all three of them would very likely beat Canelo, which is why Chavez Jr. was in a great position to reject Golden Boy’s catchweight requirement for him to get the Canelo fight.
It’s unclear at what weight Chavez Jr. was down to before he started the fluid restriction to take the water weight off. It’s likely 179. That means we could see Chavez Jr. around 180 by Saturday night rather than 185. 180 is close the weight that Canelo is rumored to be rehydrating to nowadays, though he doesn’t reveal his weight. Canelo and his team are secretive about what he rehydrates to for some reason. It doesn’t really matter whether Canelo reveals what he rehydrates to. You can tell just by looking at him how he heavy he gets. We’ll likely see Canelo around 180 tomorrow night.
“I’m very hard he made weight, because it means he trained hard and we can give the people a great fight,” said Canelo after the weigh-in.
Chavez Jr’s trainer Nacho Beristain has been dropping hints in interviews this week that his fighter plans on boxing Canelo rather than standing and slugging with him. That would be a drastic departure from the way that Chavez Jr. has fought his entire career, as he’s always slugged with his opposition, which probably hasn’t been the smartest thing for him to do. The 6’1” Chavez Jr. has always given up his height in his fights against his shorter opposition, and that’s made his fights harder for him rather than easier.
If Chavez Jr. changes his fighting style for the Canelo fight, he could give the short 5’8” fighter a lot of problems. Canelo is just a little taller than the 5’7” Miguel Cotto, and he’s at a loss when he fights guys that use their jabs. Fortunately for Canelo, most of the guys he’s fought haven’t been smart enough to realize that they need to use their jab, and this has made his job a lot easier.
A lot of boxing fans made a big deal about Floyd Mayweather Jr. out-boxing Canelo in their fight in 2013. In looking at that weight, Mayweather didn’t do anything special. He just made sure he stood on the outside and threw mainly jabs for 12 rounds. When Canelo would come forward, Mayweather would retreat and circle the ring to keep from being crowded by the short-armed Canelo, who was giving reach despite being the same height as Mayweather.
Golden Boy has really played up the animosity between Canelo and Chavez Jr., making it something that they’ve used to try and sell it to the boxing fans. The fight didn’t really need that part to be talked about as much as Golden Boy has. Just having the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo assures its success to a certain level. Canelo’s last fight on the Mexican Independence Day holiday against Liam Smith was one where it caught a lot of passive buys.
It was a terrible fight for PPV, as it matched against an unknown paper champion with limited talent zero visibility in the U.S. The fight still brought in 300,000 PPV buys on HBO despite it being a horrible one. It’s surprising that Golden Boy chose to put such a bad one on PPV. The reason they could do that was because they placed it strategically on the Mexican holiday where it would attract buys passively without them having to put Canelo under any risk by matching him against a good fighter that had some actual talent.
Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. is a fight that has really caught and resonated with the Mexican community in the States. Golden Boy is counting on the Mexican boxing fans to purchase the Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. fight in high numbers on Saturday night on HBO PPV. The fight card will start at 9:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. PT at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight is sold out.
“People know this is an all-out action-packed war. We haven’t had a fight like this in years; it’s a true Mexican civil war,” said Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions.
It’s a good fight, Canelo and Chavez Jr. I don’t know if it’s as good as De La Hoya makes it out to be. If it were taking place in 2012, I’d say it’s a much better fight. Right now, it’s more of a Canelo vs. James Kirkland II type of affair in which we’re seeing Golden Boy take a fighter that is no longer active being put in with Canelo. Chavez Jr. was out of the ring for 1 ½ years before his last fight against Dominik Britsch last December. Chavez Jr. fought twice in 2015 and just once in 2016 due to a hand injury.
Middleweight contender David Lemieux (37-3, 33 KOs) and Marcos Reyes (35-4, 26 KOs) both weighed in at 163 pounds for their 10 round co-feature bout. Reyes initially weighed in at 163 ½ lbs. However, after stripping off his socks and underwear, he weighed in successfully at 163. Lemieux is a heavy favorite to defeat the 29-year-old Reyes. Lemieux is coming off of a brutal knockout win over Curtis Stevens in his last fight. Reyes is a step down Lemieux, and the Canadian fighter openly admits it. This is not as good a fight as Lemieux’s last one. Stevens would make easy work of Reyes. That tells how bad of a mismatch Lemieux-Reyes is. It’s not worthy of a co-feature fight on HBO PPV in my opinion. It’s more of a regular HBO type of fight.
There is a lot of speculation whether Golden Boy Promotions placed Lemieux in the co-feature bout in order to let him be seen by the boxing public to create interest in a Canelo vs. Lemieux fight in September. There are a lot of rumors that Golden Boy isn’t quite ready to let Canelo fight Golovkin yet, so they might opt to let that fight marinate for another year until May 2018. Lemieux would be a perfect warm-up to get Canelo ready for the big punching style of Golovkin in May 2018. Let’s hope these rumors don’t turn out to be true, because the Canelo-Golovkin fight has already marinated for 2 years, and adding another year would make it a joke.
Former light welterweight world title challenger Lucas Matthysse (37-4, 34 KOs) weighed in at 147 pounds for his 10 round fight against Emanuel “Transformer” Taylor (20-4, 14 KOs). For his part, Taylor also weighed in at 147 lbs. This is the first fight in a year and a half for the 34-year-old Matthysse. He suffered a busted eye socket in his fight against Viktor Postol in 2015. Matthysse has abandoned the 140 lb. division to fight at welterweight. Matthysse thinks the 147 lb. division will be a better one for him. It remains to be seen if he has the height and reach to compete against the taller fighters in this division. At 5’6 ½”, Matthysse might be a little bit too small to compete at the highest rungs of the welterweight division.
Undefeated featherweights Joseph Diaz Jr. (23-0, 13 KOs) weighed in at 125.5 lbs. for his fight against unbeaten Manuel “Tino” Avila (22-0, 8 KOs). For his part, Avila weighed in at 125 lbs. Diaz Jr. vs. Avila is scheduled for 10 rounds. This should be a good fight, but ultimately it’s one that will be won by Diaz Jr. Golden Boy Promotions isn’t going to have Diaz Jr. walk the plank by putting him in with a contender that can actually beat him. Diaz Jr. is going to be strategically matched similar to how Canelo has for most of his career.
