Less than a week remains before Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. end their rivalry in the ring.
The HBO Pay-Per-View fight takes place on Saturday night from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Because of their respective weight divisions, nobody believed their contest would ever come together. But they agreed on a catch-weight of 164.5-pounds, with Canelo coming up from the junior middleweight limit of 154 and Chavez Jr. coming down from the super middleweight limit of 168.
Chavez Jr. appears to be in the best shape of his life after training for several months in the high altitude mountains with Hall of Fame trainer Nacho Beristain and conditioning coach Memo Heredia. He weighed 169.5-pounds as of last Wednesday.
The boxer is already in Las Vegas and wants to change things around from the last time he headlined a pay-per-view major event in the city. Back in September of 2012, Chavez Jr. lost his WBC middleweight belt when he was dominated over twelve rounds by Sergio Martinez. While he began to rally in the eleventh and nearly stopped Martinez in the twelfth, it was too little too late after giving up the first ten rounds.
“With the experience I have I’ve come to put on a good fight. It will be hard, difficult. I have confidence that I can get past this commitment and have a good result, a good fight where I can knock him out, beat him like I said I would and I have prepared with that mentality,” Chavez Jr. said to Sports Addiction.
“I’m ready. I’m waiting for the last few days to pass, so the people can enjoy a good fight. I feel good. Logically, there’s a change of altitude [in Las Vegas], but that’s what we’ve prepared for, I’m ready for the fight.”
“I think I’ve made a good preparation and I enjoy what I do. It’s a sacrifice and you have to know how to do it – with Don Nacho and with my uncle I was able to focus on what I should have done after the Martinez fight, and here are the results.”
