By Dan Ambrose: Former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (46-1-1, 32 KO’s) suffered a cut over his eye in sparring on Sunday, and that means his fight with Brian Vera (23-6, 14 KO’s) on September 7th will be postponed, along with the undercard fight between Vanes Martirosyan vs. Demetrius Andrade.
This might actually be a good thing for Chavez Jr. to because it gives him more time to drop weight. There are rumors that Chavez Jr. was still weighing over 200 pounds with less than 1 month to go before the fight. Chavez Jr. has to get down to 168 lbs. in order to make weight for that fight, and in photos of him last week, he looked to be in the 210 lb. range.
Taking off 30-40 pounds, even if a lot of water weight, would be very difficult for Chavez Jr. to make the 168 lb. limit for the fight. Chavez Jr’s problem is he put a great deal of weight during the time he was serving a 9-month suspension for having tested positive for Cannabis from his last fight against Sergio Martinez last September.
Chavez Jr. showed up at his brother Omar Chavez’s fight against Charlie Navarro last July, and Chavez Jr. had a visible pot belly that stuck out way in front of him. Given that there was only 2 months to lose that belly, I didn’t see that Chavez Jr. could take all that weight off in time to get down to 168.
According to ESPN, Chavez Jr. would have been able to make the 168 lb. limit for the Vera fight on September 7th. But I guess we’ll never know for sure. All I know is, Chavez Jr. looked to be still over 200 pounds in a photo of him last week. He would still have had 3 weeks to burn off the blubber, but I don’t know that he would have been able to take it all off, even if he lost 5 pounds of fat per week.
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