By Dan Ambrose: ESPN’s Bernardo Osuna is reporting that former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (46-1-1, 32 KO’s) is unable to make the 168 pound weight limit for Saturday’s fight against middleweight Brian Vera (23-6, 14 KO’s), and Chavez Jr. now wants the fight to take place 5 pounds heavier at 173 lbs. for their fight at the StubHub Center, in Carson, California, USA.
It’s unknown what Vera’s thoughts are about this, but you can bet that he’s not happy about it. Vera isn’t a big middleweight, and for him to be fighting Chavez Jr. at a weigh-in limit of 173 instead of 160, he’s going to be at a huge weight advantage for this fight.
If Chavez Jr. is struggling just to make 173, you can just imagine how heavy he must be. If he comes into the fight weighing well over 190, Chavez Jr. is going to crush Vera with his size alone.
Osuna said to ESPN “Now there is a new weight for the fight, 173. This puts a doubt on the discipline of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.”
I figured that Chavez Jr. was going to have problems making weight when I saw video of him and Vera standing side by side. Chavz Jr. looked like he was easily 20 pounds heavier than Vera, and nowhere near the 168 lb. limit that he needs to be at.
As big as Chavez Jr. looks right now, he should be fighting at cruiserweight, not light heavyweight. 173 is a light heavyweight, but if Chavez Jr. is having to drain down from cruiserweight 20+ pounds just to get to 173, then he really should be fighting in the cruiserweight division and not the super middleweight division. And the sad thing is Chavez Jr. is still talking about going back down to middleweight in the future.
There’s just no way that’s going to happen, and if Chavez Jr. tries to do that, he might hurt himself by draining too much water weight in his efforts to get down to 160 for the weigh-in.
The boxing sanctioning bodies need to create strict rehydration limits of no more than 8 pounds to keep fighters from draining down to much weight to fight smaller guys to get an advantage in a weight class. It’s not fair to the fighters that are having to battle guys that out-weigh them by 15-20+ pounds, and someone is going to get seriously hurt one day this way.
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