By Dan Ambrose: I recently saw a documentary on HBO called ‘2 day – Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.’ where they showed him while he was in the process of dehyrating for his fight against Andy Lee last June, and Chavez Jr looked painfully thin, with bags under both eyes, his cheeks sunken in and almost ill looking. Chavez Jr. was in the process of dehydrating down from a high weight to make the 160 pound limit.
I couldn’t help but look at how sickly and emaciated that Chavez Jr. looked without thinking that he could be harming his body by losing this kind of weight to make fights. Chavez Jr. has been rehydrating up to 180 for some of his fights recently and that’s a ton of weight for a fighter to be losing during dehydrating to make weight. When you’re talking 20 pounds of water weight you’re really putting yourself at risk for Cardiovascular, such as an irregular heartbeat.
It’s hard on a person’s kidneys to lose tons of water weight in a short period of time and then putting it back on in 24 hours. So if Chavez Jr. boils down from 180 to 160 lbs, and then puts it back on in 24 hours, he puts himself at risk for complications from the huge movement water out of his body and then back in it in such a short period of time. This is potentially dangerous to move that kind of water weight in a short time.
It’s unknown how much longer Chavez Jr. will continue to fight at middleweight but for his sake he needs to consider moving up at least to the 168 pound division so that he’s not having to take so much water weight off in a short period of time for his fights. Even at 168, we’re still talking 12 pounds or more that Chavez Jr has to shed in terms of water. He might be better off moving up to light heavyweight at some point so that he doesn’t have to drain down so badly.
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