(Photo: Sumio Yamada) By Allan Fox: Trainer Freddie Roach hopes that tonight’s fight between his fighter WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (46-0-1, 32 KO’s) and Sergio Martinez (49-2-2, 28 KO’s) will be the last fight for the 26-year-old Chavez Jr. at 160 lbs.

Roach thinks it’s too hard on Chavez Jr’s body for him to continually boil down from the low to mid 180s to fight smaller middleweights for an advantage.

Roach said to Dan Rafael at ESPN “He’ll [Chavez Jr] be stronger and healthier, and I think ’68 is the better weight for him. We have some good opponents up there. Andre Ward looked great. I don’t think we’d fight [Ward] first, but Ward could come along the way.”

Roach goes onto say that Chavez Jr. has been against moving up and feels he’s perfectly fine fighting at middleweight. He doesn’t want to move up in weight.

Chavez Jr’s promoter Bob Arum is leaving it up to Chavez Jr. in deciding which weight class he wants to fight in. Arum recognizes that Chavez Jr. has a big advantage against his smaller opponents with his ability to rehydrate up to the 180s after he makes weight. This often leads to Chavez Jr. having a 10 to 15 pound weight advantage against almost everyone he faces. That kind of weight isn’t a big deal for larger fighters like heavyweights, but for middleweights it’s a high percentage of weight compared to their overall weight. It’s a huge advantage for Chavez Jr. to be able to do this.

Chavez Jr. said to ESPN “I feel great at 160 now that I know how to take weight off.

In judging by how emaciated Chavez Jr. looked at yesterday’s weigh-in, I don’t think he’s taking the weight off the right way. I think Chavez Jr. isn’t designed to be fighting at 160 now that’s gotten bigger. Obviously, he’s not going to stop fighting at this weight as long as he’s finding success, because the future is uncertain of how he’d do at super middleweight against guys that are the same size as him like Andre Ward, Carl Froch, Mikkel Kessler, Adonis Stevenson and Lucian Bute. It’s whole different kettle of fish.

Sadly, the World Boxing Council doesn’t have rehydration limits, so Chavez Jr. is free to gain back as much as he wants. This obviously may change in the future if a fighter is killed or left brain damaged by someone that bulks up 20+ pounds after rehydrating. We may see the sanctioning bodies changing their rules about this when a tragedy happens. It’s unfortunate that it will require someone to get badly hurt for the rules to change, but that seems to be how things go in sports.