By Chris Williams: In a sign that it’s time for Joseph ‘Jo Jo’ Diaz Jr. to finally move up in weight, he came in overweight at Friday’s weigh-in for his fight on Saturday night against World Boxing Association ‘regular’ featherweight champion Jesus M Rojas (26-1-2, 19 KOs) live on Facebook Watch at the Avalon in Hollywood, California.
Diaz Jr. (26-1, 14 KOs) came in half a pound over the featherweight limit at 126 ½ pounds last Friday at the weigh-in, making it impossible for him to capture the WBA World 126 pound title from Rojas on Saturday night. The 25-year-old Diaz Jr. now has to focus on winning the fight over the 31-year-old Puerto Rican born Rojas. For his part, Rojas made weight like a true professional, coming in at 125.8 pounds.
Rojas doesn’t have a history of blowing up in weight after he rehydrates. Unlike Diaz Jr., Rojas is at the perfect weight for the featherweight division. This would have been a voluntary title defense for Rojas over #11 WBA Diaz Jr. There are many higher ranked contenders in the WBA’s top 15 rankings, but Diaz’s connection with Golden Boy and his popularity with boxing fans made him an ideal opponent for Rojas to defend his title against.
Diaz Jr’s failure to make weight will cost him 20 percent of his purse, which is $10,000 of his purse of $50K. The only thing Diaz Jr. can count on now is winning the fight and looking good. Had Diaz Jr. made weight and won the fight tonight against Rojas, he still would have likely missed weight on his first title defense of the WBA strap, as he’s been struggling to make the 126 pound limit for some time. In Diaz Jr’s last fight against WBC featherweight champion Gary Russell Jr. last May, he looked like a full blown welterweight after he rehydrated on the night of the fight. Diaz Jr. was positively huge for the fight.
He was lucky he wasn’t fighting for the International Boxing Federation 126 pound title, as they have a 10 pound rule for rehydrating on the morning of the fight with their secondary weigh-ins. Diaz Jr. would have been miserable trying to keep his weight within the 10 pound rehydration limit on the morning of the fight against Russell Jr.
The only question now for Diaz Jr. is if 130 pounds will be a high enough cushion for his future fights. As big as Diaz Jr. is, he probably should be thinking of moving up to 135 pounds to fight at lightweight, because he’s likely going to have problems making the super featherweight limit as well, as there’s only four pounds that separates that division from the 126 pound weight class that he’s been struggling for ages to make.
‘Jo Jo’ Diaz Jr. vs. Rojas will take place tonight at 9:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. PT on Facebook Watch. Diaz Jr. needs to look a lot better tonight against Rojas than he did in losing to WBC featherweight champion Gary Russell Jr. last May. Diaz Jr. was too slow for Russell Jr., and he was helpless to do much of anything other than landing a hard shot here and there.
Diaz Jr. has taken loads up criticism from boxing fans for being given an immediate world title shot against WBA champion Rojas after having lost his last contest against World Boxing Council featherweight champion Gary Russell Jr. by a 12 round unanimous decision on May 19 of this year. While other contenders wait around for years hoping to get a title shot, the Golden Boy promoted Diaz Jr. was given back to back cracks at a world title. Unfortunately for Diaz, he failed to make weight and won’t be able to fight for a world title tonight.
It’s just as well. Diaz Jr. coming in overweight for the fight is a signal that he needs to move up to super featherweight, as he’s always been huge for the 126 pound division since he turned pro. Diaz Jr’s size has been a tremendous advantage for him against his lighter opponents. By the time Diaz Jr. rehydrates, he looks 1 to 2 divisions bigger than his opponents. If Diaz Jr. has to move up to super featherweight to face guys his own size, then he’ll need to figure out another way to win his fights rather than win on size. Having a size advantage over his opposition has been a boon for Diaz Jr., but it was never going to be something he could do for the rest of his career.
Rojas holds the lesser version of the WBA’s two featherweight titles. The primary WBA featherweight champion is Leo Santa Cruz, who would likely easily beat Rojas if he had to desire to face him, which he doesn’t appear to have. Santa Cruz is more interested in facing the bigger names in the featherweight division rather than fighting secondary 126 pound champions like Rojas.
“We dealt with it for a couple of hours. He tried to lose the weight. Just a mess,” Golden Boy Promotions president Eric Gomez said to ESPN.com. “He’s at an age where his body’s grown. The kid has hardly any fat on him. For two hours he tried everything. He went to the steam room; he did some jump-rope. He just couldn’t shake it off. It’s never good when that happens, period,” Gomez said.
Earlier this year, Diaz Jr. crushed 35-year-old former WBC super bantamweight champion Victor Terrazas in a 3rd round knockout on February 22. For Terrazas, it was his third early knockout loss in his last five fights. Diaz Jr. destroyed Terrazas on size alone in the fight.
Diaz Jr. has the youth, size and punching power advantage over Rojas for tonight’s fight. That alone should be more than enough for him to win. Diaz Jr’s major negatives are his slow hand speed and his habit of loading up on his shots. He doesn’t throw a lot of punches, and he can be outworked like we saw in his loss to Gary Russell Jr. Rojas can win tonight if he’s busy and forces Diaz Jr. to fight at a fast pace.
Prediction
Diaz will win this fight by a comfortable 12 round decision. Rojas good punching power, but he can out-boxed. He hasn’t fought anyone good during his career, and he’ll likely be out of his league against Diaz Jr. Further, the size of Diaz Jr. will be too much for Rojas to handle.
Diaz Jr. vs. Rojas will be streamed on Facebook Live. This is yet another streaming service that is available to boxing fans. It joins ESPN+ and DAZN. It’s unclear whether the streaming of fights will ever bring in a lot of money for the different networks. It’ll depend on the quality of fights. Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing USA is thus far signing aging former champions, older guys and contenders that have little chance of winning world titles. Unfortunately, the odds of Hearn finding success with DAZN don’t appear good at this time. ESPN+ is mostly streaming Top Rank fighters, and it’s also unclear whether they’ll be successful with their pay service on ESPN+. If Top Rank had a young fighter with Manny Pacquiao-like talent and popularity, they would have a good chance of bringing in a lot of subscribers to ESPN+, but unfortunately they don’t have anyone like that. Lomachenko and Crawford, Top Rank’s most talented fighters, lack the overall appeal with the casual boxing fans to bring in massive amounts of people to want to pay $5 per month to watch Top Rank boxing on ESPN+. Whether the streaming of fights will be successful or not in the long run will depend on the quality of fighters that the promotional companies put on those networks. Since Top Rank and Matchroom Boxing USA are lacking in popular fighters to put on ESPN+ and DAZN, it doesn’t look good right now for them. Perhaps in the future they’ll sign someone that the U.S fans are interested in paying to see. Matchroom has IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua in their stable, but he’s not popular in the U.S, and it’s unlikely that he’s going to become popular in American due to Hearn’s reluctance to match him against talented heavyweights like Deontay Wilder and Luis Ortiz.