(Photo credit: Naoki Fakuda) By Jason Kim: In looking at some of WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr’s last three fights in which he’s made weight at 160 and then rehydrated to near or above 180lbs, it seems clear that boxing badly needs rehydration rules and/or to have the weigh-ins changed to the day of the fight rather than the day before fight.

We’ve seen Chavez Jr. weigh in at 185, 179 and 181 for his last three fights to where he’s had big weight advantages over his opponents. Having a fighter that can rehydrate to put on massive amounts of weight the way that Chavez Jr. and some other fighters do, it’s just makes the point of a weigh-in seem kid of meaningless.

You might as well not have a weigh-in at all if you’re going put it the day before the fight and have guys draining down from two or more divisions above that weight to fight. It would be okay if the other was always doing the same thing so that we’d consistently have two guys that weigh roughly the same amount on the night of the fight but that’s not what’s happening.

We’re getting some fighters putting on 20+ pounds after they weigh-in and coming into the fight a lot bigger than their opponents and this gives them more size and power. Last night, Chavez Jr. weighed as much as a cruiserweight against Rubio and if you think that didn’t help him than you need to sit down and watch the fight again to see how Chavez Jr. was able to use his huge size to rough up Rubio and absorb whatever shots he was throwing.

One day you’re going to have a smaller fighter get really hurt against one of these bigger guys who have put on a ton of weight after rehydration. Boxing should be about fairness and you can’t have an even playing field if you have one guy ballooning up after rehydrating and then coming into the fight with a weight advantage of 15 to 25 pounds over another fighter.