By Keith Idec
LAS VEGAS – If you’d like to know the weights from the second-day weigh-in for Canelo Alvarez and Daniel Jacobs, good luck.
A strict confidentiality agreement among the two sides have prevented either camp from disclosing what Alvarez and Jacobs weighed on Saturday morning. The lack of disclosure doesn’t mean either fighter came in over the stipulated cap of 170 pounds, 10 pounds above the middleweight limit of 160.
The contracted penalty for coming in overweight at the second-day weigh-in is believed to be a low-six-figure sum per pound. Jacobs officially weighed in at 160 pounds Friday, slightly more than Alvarez (159½).
Alvarez’s team demanded the second-day weigh-in during negotiations for their middleweight title unification bout because of Jacobs’ size advantage. The 6-feet Jacobs (35-2, 29 KOs) stands four inches taller than Alvarez (51-1-2, 35 KOs), who competed at the super middleweight limit of 168 pounds in his last fight.
Gennadiy Golovkin and his team accused Jacobs of gaining an unfair advantage when he skipped the IBF’s second-day weigh-in the morning of their March 2017 fight at Madison Square Garden. Brooklyn’s Jacobs never intended to attend that second-day weigh-in, but his team didn’t alert Golovkin’s handlers before he didn’t appear at it.
Jacobs owns the IBF middleweight title, but the New Jersey-based sanctioning organization’s second-day weigh-in rule isn’t in effect for his bout with Alvarez because it’s a unification fight. Mexico’s Alvarez owns the WBA and WBC middleweight championships, the same two titles for which Jacobs boxed Golovkin.
The 32-year-old Jacobs noted earlier this week that the Golovkin situation was overblown by Golovkin and his team.
Abel Sanchez, Golovkin’s former trainer, suggested in the immediate aftermath of their fight that Jacobs weighed in excess of 180 pounds once he entered the ring. According to Sanchez, Golovkin weighed approximately 170 pounds when the opening bell rang for a closely contested fight Golovkin won by unanimous decision.
Jacobs said he expects to enter the ring at 174 or 175 pounds on Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena (DAZN).
“I wanna come in what I’ve been my whole training camp, which is about 174, 175,” Jacobs said. “So, I wanna gain about a good 15 pounds. That’s, to me, where I’m at my optimum. Anything over that, I’m sluggish. … And that’s what this whole Triple-G thing, where I came 180, 185 pounds – if you see me perform at that [weight], it’s not the best. I’m super-sluggish, I’m not fast. Especially the way I was moving on my feet, you’re not gonna get a type of performance out of a guy that’s overweight. It’s not good for your body to gain so much weight after a weigh-in like that and perform. You’re not gonna be at your best. So, 12 to 15 pounds, for me, is perfect.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.