By Dan Ambrose: Trainer Freddie Roach says he’s hearing from his sources that Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (50-2-1, 32 KOs) still is 8 pounds away from the 164 ½ pound catch-weight limit for his fight this Saturday night against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 KOs) at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Roach is concerned that Chavez Jr. will be weight drained by the time that he does take the remaining 8 pounds off to make the 164.5lb weight limit for the fight. Chavez Jr. absolutely has to make the weight because there’s a stiff $1 million per pound weight penalty that he’ll be hit with if he comes in over the catch-weight limit this Friday on May 5. The hulking 30-year-old Chavez Jr. has had problems making 168 ever since he moved up to the weight class 4 years ago in 2013.
Golden Boy Promotions, the promoters for Canelo, obviously know this, which you can argue is one of the major reasons for having a catch-weight of 164.5 for the fight. The strict weight penalty for the fight has got to be seen as an added stressor for Chavez Jr. It’s surprising that Chavez Jr. agreed to all of these things, because he might have been able to still get the Canelo fight if he had rejected the catch-weight and weight penalty. It’s not as if Canelo has a lot of options for easy fights. The boxing public wants to see him fight quality guys because it’s been 3 years since
Canelo last fought a good fighter in his prime in Erislandy Lara, and he appeared to lose that fight. Canelo is expected by the fans to start fighting good opponents. Chavez Jr. did Canelo and Golden Boy a huge favor in taking this fight, because without this fight, Canelo would be expected to fight Gennady Golovkin. That’s a fight that Canelo could be knocked out and exposed again.
“Chavez looks good and looks like he’s in shape and he’s there to fight” said Roach to Fighthub.com about Chavez Jr. “There’s so much at stake with these 2 guys, and the whole country. The winner will be a superstar in Mexico. My thing is do I take $1000 on Chavez to win $10,000? It might be worth it. He looks like he’s in shape,” said Roach about Chavez Jr. “But I’m a little bit leery how he’s going to feel making that weight , because he still has 8 pounds to go, I hear. But he could feel great and strong also [after he rehydrates].I’ve seen that before with him. He hydrates well, but Canelo does also. I expect them both to be pretty big by fight time. It’s a very interesting fight. It’s a fight that I want to see,” said Roach about the Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. fight.
Chavez Jr. should be able to make the 164.5 lb. limit. That’s a double weight for him. He made weight for his last fight against Dominik Britsch last December in fighting at 168. He should be able to make the weight for Saturday’s fight. It’s not just Chavez Jr. that has to make the weight. Canelo will need to drop weigh as well. Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya likes to say that Canelo is still growing into the middleweight division, but I think the closer reality is that he’s been a middleweight for many years.
When you weight over 170 pounds, it makes you a middleweight or even a super middleweight. Canelo has just been very good at cutting weight. He’s good at losing a lot of weight to make his special weight class of 155 for his catch-weight fights. In his last fight against Liam Smith, Canelo went down a pound lower at 154, and he looked terrible at the weigh-in. It was lucky for Canelo that he wasn’t fighting one of the good junior middleweights like Jermell or Jermall Charlo, because he probably would have been knocked out by both of those guys.
“I feel I can. I feel that I’m a bigger guy. I fought at light heavyweight. He’s never fought fighters this size, and because of that, if things pan out and I get the right shot, I think of course it can happen,” said Chavez Jr.
A knockout win for Chavez Jr. would make him a huge star in Mexico, and it would shoot new life in his once promising boxing career. Chavez Jr. hasn’t done anything in the sport for many years since his win over Andy Lee in 2012. If he could beat Canelo, it would be a big win for him. It would be a tremendous loss for Canelo and Golden Boy, because it would upset a potential fight between him and Golovkin in September and even a rematch with Miguel Cotto. Those fights would either not happen or bring in fewer PPV buys on HBO. The boxing public would think twice about paying to see Canelo fight Golovkin and Cotto if he loses to Chavez Jr.
The best way for Chavez Jr. to go about beating Canelo is to attack him hard by throwing a lot of punches and making him worth for three minutes of every round. Liam Smith gave Canelo a lot of issues last September when he was hitting him with shots in the early rounds. The body punches from Smith bothered Canelo. But where Smith went wrong was when he stopped throwing a lot of shots, and allowed Canelo to take over the fight. Chavez Jr. can wear Canelo down if he can force him into a dog fight by hitting him nonstop with shots.
Canelo does not move well at all, because he’s a wide body. The added weight that Canelo has put on for this fight will slow him down even more. He’s likely going to be in the 180s on fight night. While the weight will help Canelo initially in the early rounds, it could slow him down in the second half of the fight, because he’s not going to be accustomed to carrying that weight around under fighting conditions. It’s a lot difference fighting with an added 10 pounds than it is training. There’s more stressed involved in fighting at a much heavier weight during a live fight. Canelo will surely be feeling the negative effects of the weight gain in the second half of the fight if Chavez Jr. is still around by that point.
”One of the advantages is that he’s fought a lot of fighters, not always in their prime,” said Chavez Jr. ”Also, he’s a smaller fighter. He’s a good fighter but smaller for his division and I think that’s an advantage that I have.”
Canelo is quite a bit smaller than Chavez Jr. You can see it when the two stand next to each other. Canelo has a smaller frame and looks like he’s at least 2 divisions smaller. He’s not had to fight someone bigger than him before. Even if Canelo does weigh as much as Chavez Jr. on fight night, he’s still going to be dealing with getting hit with someone with a much bigger frame than himself. Chavez Jr. is 6’0” and Canelo is probably no more than 5’8”. He’s listed at 5’9”, but he wasn’t taller than the 5’8” Floyd Mayweather Jr. when the two of them fought in 2013. I don’t think Canelo has grown since that fight, so we’re talking about a shorter fighter getting hit by a true 6’0” guy that can get leverage on his punches to really pound Canelo. You know the old saying, ‘a good big fighter beats a good smaller fighter.’ There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but it’s generally the bigger guys that win based on size when they fight smaller fighters moving up in weight.
