By Michael Collins: There’s little question that WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and his promotional team will be pushing hard for as small a ring as humanly possible for Chavez Jr’s September 15th fight against Sergio Martinez in Las Vegas. The idea here is for Chavez Jr. to be able to trap Martinez, and for him to fight an inside battle that will suit Chavez Jr’s style of fighting.
However, Martinez needs at least an 18-foot to 20-foot ring for him to move around in against the stalking Chavez Jr. For the Andy Lee vs. Chavez Jr. fight, it looked as if they were fighting in a small 16-foot ring. There wasn’t any mention of the actual ring size that night but it looked awfully small, and it clearly helped Chavez Jr. catch up to Lee. Some boxing fans think it’s great for fighters to have as small a ring as possible so that it will force action a lot more, and that’s certainly true.
However, if you’re going to have Chavez Jr. fighting Martinez in a telephone booth sized ring then then Martinez needs to push for a rehydration limit so that Chavez Jr. doesn’t balloon up more than 10 pounds after he rehydrates. Fair is fair. You can’t have Chavez Jr. bloating up 20+ pounds and weighing over 180 pounds, and then also getting the benefit of a small ring to fight in.
That’s not really fair because he’s a much heavier middleweight than Martinez. For Chavez Jr. to get both of those things seems hardly unfair, but that’s likely what’s going to happen because he holds the WBC title. Martinez can say no, but that will only give Chavez Jr. an excuse to walk away and go fight some more Sebastian Zbiks and Andy Lees in a small ring.