Chavez Jr. says he ate little for 2 weeks before Canelo fight

Boxingnews24.com

By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions really did a good job of picking out Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s last opponent Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. to fight their star fighter last Saturday night, but they also picked out a guy that was BADLY overweight and much too heavy to melt off the pounds to get down to the strict 164 ½ pound catchweight for their fight on May 6. Chavez Jr. says he ate very little in the last 2 weeks before the Canelo fight so that he could get down to the 164.5 pound catchweight.

Chavez Jr. says he very weak for the Canelo fight, which was the reason why he was unable to do anything to make it a competitive match. Canelo won by a 12 round unanimous decision in winning every round of the fight. At the weigh-in, Chavez Jr. looked he’d starved himself. There’s a difference between looked weight drained and looking starved. Chavez Jr. looked starved, and he still looked that way on the night of the fight.

“Nobody thought that I would make the weight, but that caused me to not have energy,” said Chavez Jr. to ESPN Deportes about him feeling weak from getting down to the 164 ½ lb. contract weight for the Canelo fight. ”In the last two weeks I ate very little, last week I did not eat almost anything,” said Chavez Jr.

There are instances where fighters make excuses for them performing badly in fights. A lot of times the excuse are empty ones that are to believe as having any value, but with Chavez Jr., I think he’s definitely being honest about his physical condition for the Canelo fight. Chavez Jr. looked thin from muscle loss from an inadequate number of calories in leading up to the Canelo fight on May 6 on HBO PPV.

Ultimately, it’s Chavez Jr’s fault for agreeing to take the fight in May rather than pushing for it to take place near the end of the year so that he could have more time to take the weight off slowly without limiting his food intake. But it could have been that Chavez Jr. wouldn’t have got the fight against Canelo if he told them that he needed more time to reduce the weight. It’s possible that the offer that Chavez Jr. got from Golden Boy was a take it or leave it offer, which meant that if he didn’t take the fight now, there’s no guarantee that the fight against Canelo would be offered in the future. With Canelo’s lack of size, I don’t see him doing well in the middleweight division.

I believe that Canelo will lose his next fight to Gennady Golovkin, and need guys like Chavez Jr. to get him winning again. Chavez Jr. would have been fine if he’d told Golden Boy and Canelo he needed more time, because the redheaded star isn’t going to do well at 160 unless he avoids guys like Daniel Jacobs and Jermall Charlo in my opinion. That’s why fighters like Chavez Jr. are very important to Canelo, because he can beat this type of opponent, but he definitely be able to beat Golovkin, Jacobs or Charlo from the way I see it. It’s too bad Chavez Jr. didn’t realize that he was in stronger position that he thought. He should have pushed for a catchweight of 172 and given Canelo a take it or leave it offer. It’s too late now though.

”My mind wanted [to fight] but my body didn’t respond to me,” said Chavez Jr. ”I had condition but not strength. I don’t think the massage [right before the fight – an issue raised by both Nacho Beristain and Memo Heredia] caused my pathetic performance. [it was] undoubtedly the worst performance of my career,” Chavez said.

I wouldn’t say this was the worst performance of Chavez Jr’s career in losing to Canelo. It was obviously the worst moment of Chavez Jr’s career in terms of being seen fighting poorly. I thought Chavez Jr. was much worse in his loss to Andrzej Fonfara in 2015. Chavez Jr. was terrible in that fight.

The way that Fonfara knocked Chavez Jr. down in round 9, it was like watching a lumberjack chop down a tree. Chavez Jr. fell backwards like a tree without bracing himself as he was falling. Chavez Jr. did a perfect back flop in hitting the canvas. After the round ended, Chavez, promptly quit on his stool despite his trainer trying to encourage him to continue. It was a ‘no mas’ moment for Chavez Jr. At least in the Canelo fight, Chavez fought to the end. If nothing else, Chavez Jr. showed a lot of courage to stand in there and take a bad beating from Canelo for 12 rounds.

If the shoe was on the other foot, would Canelo absorb an equal beating without quitting or getting knocked out? I don’t think Canelo would. I’ve seen Canelo take a little bit of punishment in his fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013, and he looked like he was ready to quit in that fight. I can’t even begin to imagine Canelo taking a prolonged beating like the one Chavez Jr. took without him – or his trainers – pulling the plug on the fight to save him for another day. I suspect that’s what’s going to happen to Canelo in the Golovkin fight.

I don’t think for a second that Canelo’s trainers are going to let him take a beating from Golovkin on September 16. Once the going gets tough and Canelo starts to get thrashed, I see his trainer Eddy Reynoso throwing in the towel to save him. The reason, of course, is because Canelo is too valuable to be beaten to a pulp by Golovkin and having his boxing career shortened. Putting Canelo in with Golovkin is like taking a Ferrari off road and racing a jeep in the mud. Canelo isn’t built for the type of fight that Golovkin is going to bring to him on September 16. As good as Canelo is, he’s not made for that. Canelo is made to beat guys like Chavez Jr., Liam Smith and Amir Khan. in other words, Canelo beat fighters that aren’t hitting him back. Believe me, Golovkin is going to be hitting Canelo back, and he’s going to be hitting him HARD. That towel is going to get thrown into the ring to save Canelo once Golovkin gets warmed up and starts giving him a beating.

“I know people did not have the show I wanted, when you get into the ring you do not go to lose, I feel bad too, worse than everyone, worse than my fans, but I made a superhuman effort [to make weight]. That’s why Oscar De La Hoya and Canelo asked me to get down to that weight, they knew that it was going to kill me,” said Chavez Jr.. I did not want to fail but it did not work for me, so I can continue to get more criticism.”

We’ll never know if the reason why Oscar De La Hoya wanted Chavez Jr. to get down to 164.5 lbs. to fight Canelo at a catchweight, but I know for a lot of boxing fans, they suspect that De La Hoya did it in order to drain Chavez Jr. to the point where he’d have no chance of beating his cash cow. It’s interesting that a catchweight isn’t being used for the Golovkin fight for Canelo to get an edge. Of course, the fight with Golovkin is being made 2 years after the point where it should have been made. Golovkin has been waiting since he was 33-years-old. Golovkin is now 35, and is coming off one of the worst performances of his career against Danny Jacobs. Maybe that performance is good enough to make De La Hoya think that Canelo can beat Golovkin without a strength draining catchweight.