By Rob Smith: With only two weeks to go before their big fight in Las Vegas, WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (46-0-1, 32 KO’s) is still kind of flabby around the neck and jowls for his fight against Sergio Martinez (49-2-2, 28 KO’s) on September 15th at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. I’m not sure what’s missing from Chavez Jr’s training camp because I’ve never seen him so fat before a fight before. Judging from recent photos taken of him on fightnews.com, Chavez Jr has little double chin going and his face looks flabby like he’s been eating too good.
Chavez Jr. can’t afford to come into this weight weighing in the mid 180s, because that’s just too much weight to take off during the dehydration process. I’ve heard of fighters taking off as much as 23 pounds of water weight to make weight, but I’ve never heard of a fighter taking off more than that before. Right now, Chavez Jr. looks to me to be in the upper 180s. Yes, there’s two weeks to go before the fight but how much fat can you take off in that short of a time? Not much.
Roach needs to get Chavez Jr. wired so he can lose of this weight, because Chavez Jr. can’t just count on being able to lose 20+ pounds of water weight to make weight. Something could go wrong with him either not making weight or ending up too weight drained to fight effectively against Martinez. Of course, this could be a strategy that Chavez Jr. is using in order to get an advantage against Martinez. He could be figuring that if he comes in real heavy, like in the cruiserweight levels, he can simply squash the 160 pound Martinez on September 15th.
If Chavez Jr. can come into the ring over 180 on September 15th, it will definitely be hard on Martinez in the first six rounds when Chavez Jr. is at full strength. But all that weight could turn around and bite Chavez Jr. on the backside if the fight goes into the second half of the bout, because he could end up tiring out.