Marco Antonio Rubio (59-6-1, 51 KOs) failed to make weight today at the weigh-in for his big fight on Saturday night against WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (30-0, 27 KOs). Rubio tried to get down to the 160 pound limit, but he reached a sticking point at 161.8 pounds and he couldn’t get any lower than that.
Rubio stripped down in a vain attempt to make the weight, but it was clear he wasn’t going to be able to make the weight. By not making weight, Rubio will lose $100,000 of his $450,000 purse for the fight. This obviously was poor planning on Rubio’s part because the warning signs were there a month ago when Rubio weighed in at 174.5 pounds. In contrast, Golovkin weighed just 165 pounds at the time.
It showed pretty clearly that Rubio was going to have problems when it came to making the weight. His trainer Robert Garcia should have stepped up the cardio at that time to get him to strip off extra weight because he looked like he was going to be too big to make the limit. Of course, we have no way of knowing whether the original intention was for him to come in as big as possible to try and gain a weight edge against Golovkin.
Rubio’s best chance of beating Golovkin is by being bigger than him in the same way Orlando Salido was able to defeat Vasyl Lomachenko by having a weight advantage over him after failing to make weight.
“It’s the biggest fight of his career against the most dangerous fighter, so it’s a big disappointment,” Robert Garcia said via Dan Rafael of ESPN.com. “We were trying. He did everything he could to make weight. But he got a point where his body just shut down. No more weight was going to come off. He just couldn’t do it.”
WBA super World featherweight champion Nonito Donaire (33-2, 21 KOs) had no problems making weight for his fight against Nicholas Walters (24-0, 20 KOs). Donaire weighed in at 125.6 pounds. Walters came in at 126.6 pounds as well. This is going to be a tough fight for Donaire. He could very well taste defeat again, but in this case he might get knocked out.
