Roach Might Train Chavez for Canelo, But Would Have Short Leash

By Keith Idec

Freddie Roach is willing to train Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. for a big fight against Canelo Alvarez.

Chavez’s on-again, off-again trainer has made the stipulations for a potential reunion very clear, however, to the enigmatic Mexican fighter’s legendary father.

“I might train Chavez for that,” Roach told BoxingScene.com. “They’ve been calling me. I like his dad a lot. I told his dad, ‘All he has to do is show up every day and I’ll train him. But if he misses one day, I quit.’ That’s my firm thing with him.”

Roach believes Chavez (50-2-1, 32 KOs, 1 NC) could upset Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 KOs), against whom the onetime light heavyweight contender would have a significant size advantage.

“Chavez is a good opponent, but only if he’s in 100-percent good shape,” Roach said. “He has to look a lot better than he did in his last fight. [The size] could be an advantage [over Alvarez], but they are making him come down to 65 or 64. He’ll struggle. I had him at 60 for a couple fights. He struggled to make those fights, but he made it.”

The 30-year-old Chavez weighed in at 168 pounds for his last fight, a 10-round, unanimous-decision win against Germany’s Dominik Britsch (32-3-1, 11 KOs) on December 10 in Monterrey, Mexico. The contract weight for that fight was 169 pounds.

“This fight he was 68 and it was a long time in between [fights],” Roach said, referring to Chavez ending a 16-month layoff against Britsch. “But to go down from 68 to a lower weight class will be easier for him, if he didn’t get too big after the fight. But we can’t rely on that, though. We don’t know yet, or I don’t know yet how big he is.”

Roach thinks an Alvarez-Chavez clash would be a big event, but he isn’t certain Oscar De La Hoya, Alvarez’s promoter, is serious about the WBO 154-pound champion moving up at least 10 pounds to face Chavez.

“I don’t know,” Roach said. “It’s a saleable fight. It’s good. It keeps Golden Boy going with their cash cow. They’re not gonna give him up to anyone great at this point, I feel. He’s probably their only pay-per-view fighter at this point. But a lot of people don’t have pay-per-view fighters nowadays.

“There’s only very few that can really do that at this point. Pacquiao’s still doing it, but it’s not as good as it used to be. But that’s how life is. We need to build up new guys coming up. [Canelo is] the biggest guy out there right now, so they’re gonna be careful who they put him with.”

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