HBO to show ‘Road To Chavez-Vera II’ on Feb. 17
HBO's "Road To Chavez-Vera II" will air at 10:15 p.m. ET/PT in advance of the 168-pound rematch between Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Bryan Vera that is scheduled for March 1 at The Alamodome in San Antonio in Vera's home state of Texas.
The 15-minute special will address Vera's losing a controversial 10-round unanimous decision to Chavez in a September bout that bout took place in California at a 173-pound catchweight because Chavez was not able to make the originally contracted limit.
According to CompuBox, Vera (23-7, 14 knockouts) had a 176-125 advantage in overall punches landed, as well as winning 109-98 in power shots compared to Chavez (47-1-1, 32 KOs), who was awarded the decision by scores of 96-94, 97-93 and 98-92 by Carla Caiz, Marty Denkin and Gwen Adair, respectively.
In a poll of 59 media members, 53 scored the bout in favor of Vera, with the remaining six calling it a draw. In its round-by-round, RingTV.com scored the fight for Vera, 97-93.
Click here for RingTV.com’s Chavez-Vera round-by-round.
The Chavez-Vera undercard bout will feature WBO featherweight titleholder Orlando Salido (40-12-2, 28 KOs) defending against Ukrainian Vasyl Lomachenko.
A two-time Olympic gold medalist, Lomachenko fought in October and scored two body-shot knockdowns during a fourth-round stoppage of Jose Luis Ramirez in a scheduled 10-rounder.
Lomachenko's pro record is popularly seen as 1-0 (1 KO), though boxing record keeper FightFax lists it at 7-0 due to the fact that he participated in the "semi-pro" World Series of Boxing in 2013.
He hopes to dethrone Salido, who won the vacant belt by seventh-round knockout of Puerto Rican featherweight contender Orlando Cruz on the same card as Lomachenko-Ramirez.
Photo: Naoki Fukuda