(Photo Credit: HBO/Ed Mulholland) By Dan Ambrose: Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. looked like skin and bones during today’s weigh-in with Brian Vera for their fight on Saturday. The weigh-in took place at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California.
It’s hard to believe how skinny Chavez Jr. looked considering that he came in at 172.4 pounds.
I’ve seen Chavez Jr. look this painfully thin for his weigh-ins when he drained down from the 190s to make 160 for his fights at middleweight in the past. But with Chavez Jr. now weighing in at 172.4 for their 173 lb. weight limit, I can imagine Chavez Jr. coming in close to 200 lbs. for his fight on Saturday.
Vera weighed in at 171.2 lbs. today, and the thing with him is he looked like he was ready to climb in the ring and start fighting. It makes sense because this is about how much Vera weighs after he rehydrates for his fights at 160. For this fight, Vera won’t have to rehydrate at all because he’s right at his fighting weight.
Tomorrow night’s fight will take place at the StubHub Center, in Carson, California, USA. The fight is taking place in Carson, California in order to take advantage of Chavez Jr’s huge fan base in the area.
Chavez Jr’s promoter Bob Arum likely would have staged the fight in Las Vegas, Nevada, but after his last fight against Sergio Martinez where Chavez Jr. was given a huge $900,000 fine for testing positive for marijuana, it looks like Arum is choosing to give Nevada the cold shoulder. It’s too bad, because Chavez Jr-Vera would be a good fight for Vegas, even though it’s pretty much a mismatch due to Chavez Jr’s huge size advantage.
It’s going to be interesting to see if Chavez Jr. comes into this fight over 200 lbs. I have a feeling that he refuse to be weighed before he steps inside of the ring tomorrow night, so we may not ever know what his actual weight is after he rehydrates. But it doesn’t really matter, because if Chavez Jr. looks like a heavyweight against a super middleweight tomorrow night, fans will know that the fight isn’t really a fair one in terms of the fighter’s weight.
The sanctioning bodies really need to start implementing rehydration limits in boxing to keep fighters from dehydrating to fight against smaller fighters.
If the sanctioning bodies would just create some rules where a fighter can’t regain more than 8 pounds, it would help keep boxers in their correct divisions for their bodies instead of trying to take advantage by draining down to fight smaller guys.
One of these days when a fighter with a 20 pound weight advantage badly hurts a smaller opponent, only then will the sanctioning bodies finally do what they should have done years ago by creating rules about rehydrating.
At this point boxing is still like Wild West where fighters can dehydrate 20+ pounds to fight in divisions 3-5 times below their normal weight, and they rehydrate overnight to come into the fight like the incredible hulk to pound the daylights out of a smaller guy. This happens without the sanctioning bodies doing anything to police this.
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