Vargas-Camacho: Can Fernando Slim down enough to make this fight?

By Boxing News - 11/03/2009 - Comments

vargas6854353By Jim Dower: Last Friday night Hector Camacho Jr. (50-3-1, 27 KO’s) defeated Luis Ramon “Yory Boy” Campas in an ugly foul plagued 10 round split decision on October 30th. After the fight, former International Boxing Federation light middleweight champion Fernando Vargas (26-5, 22 KO’s) waddled into the ring, looking at least 100 pounds overweight from my estimate, and called out the 31-year-old Camacho Jr. for a fight. It appears that Camacho Jr. will be accepting the fight, because it isn’t like he has too many other options at this point in his career. While this might make a halfway decent fight to see on ESPN, I wonder if the obese looking Vargas can get down low enough to fight Camacho at 154.

Vargas hasn’t fought in the past two years since losing a 12 round majority decision against Ricardo Mayorga in November 2007. That fight took place at 164, and rumor had it that Vargas had to slim down from a hefty 300 to take the fight with Mayorga. I’m no expert at guessing people’s weights, but I’d say that Vargas could possibly be weighing around 300 pounds now.

For Vargas to fight Camacho Jr., he’d have to try and make the fight happen at super middleweight or possibly higher. I doubt that Vargas could make 168 without starving himself dramatically and exercising like a dog for at least six to eight months. When a person has to trim off 100 pounds or so, it takes a considerable amount of time to take that kind of weight off. If we’re talking even more than 100 like say 130 pounds, it will take even longer. Vargas has really let himself go in the past two years since his loss to Mayorga and I can’t see him taking that kind of weight off in a matter of months.

Even if the fight takes place at 175, Vargas would still have to take off at least 100 pounds, maybe more judging by the looks of him when he was calling out Camacho Jr. after his fight last Friday night. I don’t see how Vargas would be fit enough to fight having dropped that kind of massive tonnage. That’s just too much weight to take off and expect to be competitive.

If Vargas’ whole objective is just to get another good payday, then it won’t be so bad. But, if Vargas is expecting to actually win the fight, I don’t like his chances for making that happen. Vargas will probably be really weakened if he has to drop 100 pounds of weight.



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