By Dan Ambrose: Former IBF/WBA junior middleweight champion Fernando Vargas (26-5, 22 KO’s) will be returning to the ring after 4 years out of action to face 32-year-old super middleweight Henry Buchanan (20-2, 13 KO’s) on April 16th. Speaking to ESPN, the 33-year-old Vargas said, “I took three years off and I’m still young. I’m excited about fighting again and I know I can win another world title.” It’s hard to vision a world where Vargas can ever win another major title.

He’s looked very fat in recent pictures and there are reports that Vargas’ weight has been hovering in the neighborhood of 200 lbs. Given that Vargas fought at 154 in his prime, it would require Vargas to burn off around 40+ pounds of blubber. To be sure, some boxers can do this without being weakened by the process, but many others end up considerably weakened from having to take this kind of weight off.

One problem that could be even more important than the massive amount of weight that Vargas would have to take off is his loss of hand speed. In Vargas’ last fight four years ago in 2007 against Ricardo Mayorga, Vargas looked painfully slow and was only able to fight hard for the first half of the fight before fading and losing to Mayorga by a 12 round decision. Now four years later and still battling weight problems, Vargas has got to be even slower than he was back then. I’m sure Vargas would love to get a fight against WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto, but I can’t see Vargas being competitive with Cotto. And against other top junior middleweights like Sergiy Dzinziruk, Vargas would have an even worse time.

Vargas has lost his last three fights dating back to 2006, losing twice to Shane Mosley and once to Mayorga. Vargas’ last win was against Javier Castillejo way back in 2005. One wonders why Vargas had decided to come back after all this time. Does he need money or does he really think he can be a factor in the super middleweight division.