By Keith Idec

LAS VEGAS – Angel Heredia has bad news for anyone anticipating the task of making 164½ pounds Friday to decimate Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.

Heredia, Chavez’s strength and conditioning coach, told BoxingScene.com on Thursday that Chavez will make weight without issue on Friday because he has taken the proper approach to shedding pounds throughout training camp. Heredia said he expects Chavez to go to bed Thursday night at about 165 pounds, just a half-pound over the contracted catch weight for his HBO Pay-Per-View showdown with Canelo Alvarez on Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena.

The 26-year-old Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 KOs) and the 31-year-old Chavez (50-2-1, 32 KOs, 1 NC) are scheduled to weigh in at 5 p.m. ET/2 p.m. PT on Friday at MGM Grand Garden Arena.

“He’s gonna go to bed at 165 and pretty much just wake up [Friday] at 164.3, 164.5,” Heredia said. “Then he’ll just walk it off and that’s it. He has to wake up the latest [he can]. Sleep till 1 o’clock [in the afternoon]. The more you sleep, the more weight you lose. That’s a true fact.”

Heredia attributes Chavez’s success in getting down to his lowest weight in nearly five years to Chavez’s commitment to training even before finalizing a deal for the Alvarez fight. Chavez typically has added a lot of weight between bouts, which, coupled with his inconsistent training habits, has made it difficult for him to make weight at times.

The former WBC middleweight champion arrived at this training camp late in February at about 190 pounds, according to Heredia. He did light training in the weeks following his 10-round, unanimous-decision defeat of Germany’s Dominik Britsch (32-3-1, 11 KOs) on December 10 in Monterrey, Mexico.

That conditioning work helped Chavez come to training camp in the mountains near Toluca, Mexico, lighter than usual and made Heredia’s job easier.

“That’s the credit I have to give him,” Heredia said. “Because when I got him, he was at a very good weight, a very comfortable weight that was easy to manage. He wasn’t like a big piñata, coming into the camp. He was OK. I was very surprised. I said, ‘Man, you look good.’ ”

Chavez trained well for the Britsch bout, which was contested at the super middleweight limit of 168 pounds. He was even more committed to preparing for this fight, for which he would be fined $1 million per pound if Chavez comes in overweight.

“I’m assuming every time he thinks about a Snickers,” Heredia said, “he thinks about [losing] a million dollars and then he goes, ‘No! It’s not worth it.’ ”

Because Chavez has strictly adhered to Heredia’s schedule for losing weight throughout this training camp, Heredia expects the roughly 30 hours between Friday’s weigh-in and the start of their fight late Saturday night to be more than enough time for Chavez to rehydrate properly, and feel fresh and strong in the ring.

“I don’t see any issues,” Heredia said. “That happens with athletes that lost 20, 30 pounds drastically. You don’t give the body the time to compensate. That’s the problem. And we know what we’re doing. He understands now the fact that it’s better to do it slowly, giving the body the time to compensate and recover, than just giving it one week before [the fight], like he used to do. Because back in the day, he used to do it because he wanted to gain weight, he wanted to train comfortably and spar. He didn’t wanna get tired. And he just wanted to [lose weight] at the last minute.

“That is an advantage to some, but I don’t condone that at all. We don’t like that system. The problem is this – when you dehydrate in [that way], you lose fluid in your brain. That’s what protects your brain from shaking. What happens is you don’t recover within 24 hours. It might take up to 48 hours. So you might rehydrate, but not completely. Plus, the brain [becomes inflamed]. So you’re in the position where if you lose a fight, that’s [OK]. But you can die in the ring. You can go in a coma. So those things are very important to us. That’s why we don’t condone that. That’s why the dehydration system is terrible. And obviously you’ve seen so many fighters, they’ve never been knocked down and all of a sudden they battle to make weight, they’ve got no legs, they’ve got no reflexes, because you also lose reflexes because you have no minerals, you have no ions, and then you don’t have flexibility.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.