Chavez again deals with weighty issue
VEGAS — The major prefight question is whether Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. will make weight.
The former middleweight champion, with a history of checkered commitment and stepping on the scale overweight, must weigh no more than 164.5 pounds Friday to avoid a stiff financial penalty in his pay-per-view catchweight bout with Mexican countryman Canelo Alvarez.
On Wednesday, Chavez (50-2-1, 32 knockouts) told reporters at a meeting before the fighters’ news conference that he weighed 168 pounds, in good position to make weight.
“The final couple of pounds will tell us everything,” Chavez assistant manager Sean Gibbons told The Times while preparing for the fighter’s 10 p.m. run and workout. “If he makes that final cut simple, it’s game over for Canelo. He’ll be a dead man, a middleweight getting pounded by a cruiserweight.”
There is no rehydration clause restricting what Chavez gains after the weigh-in, enhancing his desire to impose his height and weight advantage on Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 KOs), who fought at 154 pounds in September.
Chavez’s trainer, Angel Heredia, is tasked with maximizing the boxer’s strength while supervising a weight cut of high importance. If Chavez weighs in at 164.6 pounds or higher Friday, it’s a $1-million penalty.
“He’s in good shape, woke up at 167 this morning,” Heredia said, describing Chavez’s diet as 1,000 calories daily, with strawberries, jicama and eggwhite omelettes downed with water.
“He knows $1 million is a lot to give.”
Alvarez wants no part of special belt
There won’t be a championship at stake Saturday when Alvarez and Chavez fight each other, as the fight is scheduled to take place at a catchweight of 164.5 pounds. That didn’t stop the World Boxing Council from trying to make itself a part of the event. The Mexico City-based organization created a special title belt to award to the winner.
One problem: Alvarez doesn’t want it.
A 4-to-1 betting favorite, Alvarez is still fuming over how the WBC stripped him of his middleweight championship last year and awarded it to Gennady Golovkin.
After a knockout victory over Amir Khan, Alvarez was given a 15-day window to reach an agreement to fight Golovkin, who held the International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Assn. titles. Alvarez said he tried to make the fight. But as the negotiations entered more complicated stages, he had to defend himself in a lawsuit filed by a former promoter. Alvarez decided to prioritize his legal problems and abandoned the negotiaLAS tions with Golovkin. (Alvarez lost an $8.5-million judgment.)
“I won that belt with blood, sweat, sacrifice, a great training camp, by beating Miguel Angel Cotto,” Alvarez said in Spanish.
“When I vacated it, they gave it to the other guy like that, without making him drop a bead of sweat. He didn’t even go through a single training camp and they gave it to him. They put it on the table. That’s not an organization you can respect.”
While Alvarez remained open to working again with the WBC, he said he wouldn’t deal with the organization in the fight against Chavez or in any future fight against Golovkin. That could cost the WBC money, as sanctioning bodies charge boxers a percentage of their purses for the right to fight for their championships.
Linares-Campbell bout in the making
Eric Gomez, president of Golden Boy Promotions, said he’s pursuing a lightweight title defense by WBA champion Jorge Linares (42-3, 27 KOs) against England’s Luke Campbell (17-1, 14 KOs).
Campbell, a 2012 Olympic gold medalist, defeated Darleys Perez by ninth-round technical knockout Saturday at Wembley Stadium on the undercard of the Anthony JoshuaWladimir Klitschko heavyweight title fight.
Linares, who was in attendance, showed interest in fighting WBC lightweight champion Mikey Garcia after defeating Anthony Crolla in March, but Gomez said Garcia is pursuing another bout this summer.