Mayorga Vargas: Will The Weight Loss Effect Fernando?

By Boxing News - 11/23/2007 - Comments

vargas357533.jpgIf this bout had taken place in 2000, before Fernando Vargas (26-4, 22 KOs) had been stopped by Felix Trinidad in a war, I’d easily pick Fernando to defeat tonight’s opponent Ricardo Mayorga (28-6-1, 23 KOs). However, the 29 year-old Vargas isn’t nearly the same fighter he was then, having lost much of his quickness along with stamina and youth. Though he’s not even 30, and relatively young in years, he’s like a fighter in his late 30s, ready for retirement.

Some of the wear and tear is just the natural course of aging, while others are due to the damage from having fought fierce battles with Oscar De La Hoya, Trinidad, Ike Quartey, Winky Wright and Shane Mosely, to name just a few. That’s not counting all his other fights as well as all the head shots he’s no doubt taken in the amateurs and while training for bouts. However, what I’ve left out, though, is Vargas’ tendency to balloon up in weight, often over 200 lbs, between fights. That’s a massive amount of weight for Vargas to take off each time he needs to fight. In the past, when he was fighting as a junior middleweight, he’d have to take off more than 50 lbs just to make weight.

For anyone that has ever had to take off a lot of weight, they know how how it leaves one feeling weak and lethargic afterwards. Even when you take it off slowly over a course of a year, it still leaves you feeling weaker than you were before you’d originally put all the weight on to begin with. This is perhaps why that Vargas wanted to make this fight at 160+ lbs, knowing that he’d not be in fighting shape if he had to lose even more to make 154, his former fighting weight. A person may think that a fighter is fit and ready to fight hard after seeing them looking slender at the time of a fight. However, the average fan doesn’t realize that the fighter is often half starved by the time they take off all that weight, and are in no way in condition for a hard grueling fight.

Which is why fighters that put on weight, such as Erik Morales and Vargas, are essentially never the same after they start losing their conditioning. You can’t go back, I guess is what I’m trying to say. This is why it’s important for a fighter to never let themselves get out of shape if they can help it, because if they have to take off more than 20 lbs, they’re looking for big trouble. In a case where they have to take off over 50 lbs, like Vargas has had to do while trying to get down to fighting weight for tonight’s battle against Mayorga, it’s almost suicidal.

Most likely, Vargas will have gotten down only to 175+, and will dehydrate himself to take off the additional weight. Though he’ll re-hydrate himself after the weigh-in, this too will cause him to feel weaker than he would normally be. This is why, perhaps, that Vargas looks so slow in his recent bouts, as he’s had to take off so much weight that he’s in fact ended up stripping off a good portion of lean muscle tissue along the way. Doing that tends to slow down a fighter, robbing them of their speed.