By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (46-0-1, 32 KO’s) looks to be losing the battle of the bulge as he tries to get ready for his September 15th fight against Sergio Martinez (49-2-2, 28 KO’s) at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In recent training video of Chavez Jr at espndesportes, he was seen going through the paces with his physical trainer Chavez Jr. still looks wide of the 160 mark. Indeed, Chavez Jr. look like a big out of shape kid that didn’t seem too happy to be working out. The eye of the tiger didn’t appear to be there for Chavez Jr., as he wasn’t attacking his exercises the way other fighters do when motivated for a fight.

Of course, Chavez Jr. has no intention of melting down from 190+ all the way to 160. Chavez Jr’s magical weight mark will be around 180 even, and from there he’ll dydrate the last 20 ponds to go from cruiserweight to middleweight for the weigh-in on September 14th. However, Chavez Jr. looks like he’s still not even close to 180, and one hopes that he’ll work out harder than he was displaying in the video because he’s still got so much weight to take off.

Martinez has reportedly been looking real good and is right at 165 lbs, a mere five pounds over the limit. There won’t be any dehydrating for him to make the limit, because Martinez is right there.

The weight factor could be the the straw that breaks Chavez Jr’s back in this fight. While being the heavier guy has worked for him in past fight, because Chavez Jr’s has somehow not been hurt by taking off 20 pounds of water weight in a short period of time. But it could really hurt him in this fight because Martinez is so much faster and stronger than the guys that Chavez Jr has accustomed to fighting recently.

Besides that, if Chavez Jr. can’t melt down to at least 180 lbs when he started to dehydrate to make weight, he could be forced to take over 20 pounds and that might be asking too much of him. Taking off 20 pounds is incredibly hard for most fighters to do without being weakened, but then to have to take off even more than that, such as 25 pounds, it could be enough to where Chavez Jr. will finally show signs of being weight drained.