Cautious Chavez Certain He’ll Make 164.5 for Canelo Fight

By Keith Idec

NEW YORK – Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. estimated Tuesday that he weighed 183 pounds.

If he was telling the truth, that’s encouraging news for Chavez fans, considering a fighter notorious for not taking training seriously still has 10 weeks to lose less than 20 pounds for his showdown with Mexican rival Canelo Alvarez. Chavez swore before a press conference at the Hard Rock Café in Manhattan that he has learned costly lessons from failures in previous training camps that will keep him on track to make the 164½-pound limit when he steps on a scale May 5 in Las Vegas.

“I don’t want to be 190 or 200,” Chavez said, “because it’s no good for me.”

That’s among the reasons why Chavez made sure following his victory over Germany’s Dominik Britsch on December 10 that he didn’t take too much time off from the gym. That’s how he had gotten out of shape so many times in the past, and Chavez was determined to not make the same mistake again, especially once this huge, lucrative opportunity became a realistic possibility.

Chavez (50-2-1, 32 KOs, 1 NC) weighed in at 168 pounds, the super middleweight limit, the day before beating Britsch (32-3-1, 11 KOs) by unanimous decision in their 10-rounder in Monterrey, Mexico. About 2½ months later, the 6-feet-1 former WBC middleweight title-holder still is just 15 pounds over that limit.

His greatest incentive to make weight is the well-documented contractual clause that’ll penalize Chavez $1 million per pound that he’s overweight for the Alvarez fight. If he’s just one ounce over 164½ on May 5, it’ll cost Chavez $1 million, a reality that made him laugh nervously Tuesday. 

“I’m doing OK with the weight,” Chavez said. “I have [paid] a lot of attention to this, because after my last fight I stayed training. I stayed at 180, because I think this is the key to winning this fight. Don’t kill my body [in camp to make weight].”

The 31-year-old Chavez caused controversy in September 2013, when he couldn’t make the contracted weight for a super middleweight match against Bryan Vera. The weight limit was raised from 168 pounds to 173 the week of the fight, a 10-rounder Chavez won by unanimous decision.

Chavez also didn’t make weight for his unanimous-decision defeat of Mexico’s Marcos Reyes in July 2015. The contract weight for that 10-round bout was 170 pounds. Chavez weighed in at 170¾ pounds.  

“I never missed weight in title fights,” Chavez said. “All my title fights, with [Marco Antonio] Rubio, [Peter] Manfredo, [Sebastian] Zbik and Andy Lee, [Sergio] Martinez, I never missed weight. I missed with Bryan Vera, a 10-round fight, because I lost the love for the sport [after losing to Martinez the previous year].”

Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 KOs), who hasn’t weighed in at more than 155 for a professional fight, hopes Chavez means what he says and that there won’t be any issues at the weigh-in.

“That’s why it was discussed, negotiated and put on the contract,” Alvarez said. “So I hope so.”

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