WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (48-1-1, 32 KO’s) now has a big reason for him to make weight for his proposed July 19th fight against middleweight Gennady Golovkin (29-0, 26 KO’s) for their fight at 168 pounds on HBO. If Chavez Jr. fails to make weight, it’s going to cost him $1 million. Chavez Jr. agreed to the weight penalty on Friday.
The penalty also applies to Golovkin if he can’t make the 168lb, but he probably won’t struggle with the weight. It’s Chavez Jr. who is built like a cruiserweight, and who clearly is already having problems making weight for his fights at super middleweight despite having moved up from the middleweight division only last year. It seems likely that Chavez Jr. will need to make a move to the light heavyweight division in the near future if he doesn’t want to end up losing fights due to him being weigh-drained.
The Chavez Jr-Golovkin fight will be on pay per view on HBO on July 19th, if Top Rank and K2 and can agree to the particulars for the fight.
The weight penalty sounds like a big deal, but what’s to keep Chavez Jr. from negotiating a deal with Golovkin if he finds out a couple of days before the fight that there’s no way he’ll be able to make the 168lb limit? The whole idea about the weight penalty keeping both guys in line for the fight seems to be more of a media thing to get fans interested in the fight than in something that would actually happen.
There’s no way Chavez Jr. is going to lose $1 million of his purse for this fight. I don’t see that happening. If he’s way over the limit like he was for his first fight against Brian Vera last year, they’ll likely negotiate with Golovkin for the higher weight, just like they did with Vera in raising the weight limit to 173. But Chavez Jr. really needs to think about moving up to 175 or cruiserweight so that gimmicks like weight penalties aren’t needed. If the Chavez Jr is rehydrating to the 190w, then he really should be fighting in the light heavyweight division at the very least.
“We had no objection,” Chavez Jr’s promoter Bob Arum said to ESPN about the weight penalty. “We know there has been a history with Chavez. But he has no problem making 168 now. He made it with ease for the Vera rematch. He wasn’t dehydrated on the scale.”
Like I said, I think the whole weight penalty is just a big gimmick for this fight. If Chavez Jr. is in the 180s a few days before the fight, we’ll likely see him negotiate with Golovkin to have the weight limit raised so that he can make the weight without hitting the $1 million weigh-in penalty for going over 168.
