Omar Chavez must make morning weigh-in ahead of Misael Rodriguez fight

The latest drama swirling around super middleweights Misael Rodriguez and Omar Chavez could have its own arc on “Los Chavez,” the Hulu series documenting the lives of Hall of Famer Julio Cesar Chavez Snr and his brood, including son Omar.

Omar Chavez, 41-8-1 (28 KOs), failed to initially make weight on Friday for his scheduled 10-rounder against Rodriguez, 14-0 (7 KOs), on Saturday at  Arena Potosi in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Given another hour to get under the super middleweight maximum of 168lbs, Chavez made weight. But in an agreement struck between the two sides, according to Rodriguez manager Rick Mirigian, Chavez must weigh in again Saturday morning at 8 a.m. CT and tip the scales at no more than 16.8lbs (10 percent) heavier than the division limit.

Chavez and brother Julio Cesar Chavez Jnr have notoriously missed – and at times seemingly altogether blown off – weight limits on multiple occasions in previous fights.

By now, Rodriguez has likely had enough of his role in the larger narrative. A bronze medalist for Mexico at the 2016 Olympics, Rodriguez, 30, was set to face the 35-year-old Omar Chavez in Pachuca, Mexico, in October. But when Chavez failed to make weight, trainer Robert Garcia pulled Rodriguez from the fight, which set off Chavez Snr and ignited a firestorm that – at least in Mexico – hasn’t subsided since.

On the other hand, Rodriguez – previously best known globally as a guy misidentified in a recent viral video – stands to significantly raise his profile and, if he ever gets to step into the ring with Chavez, make a lot of money.

“The most popular fight in Mexico all of this year outside of Canelo [Alvarez] will be Misael and Omar Chavez,” Rodriguez manager Rick Mirigian told BoxingScene, “for no other reason than social media, the families involved and what happened in the last fight.

“This thing went from a $10,000, $15,000 fight, to, say, oh, a six-figure fight because of the attention that those two got when they didn’t fight.

Mirigian said the event ballooned from a “$10,000, 15,000 fight to, say, oh, a six-figure fight” simply because of the public fallout from Rodriguez and Chavez not fighting in October.

“That fight is gonna have so much attention, so many eyeballs on it,” Mirigian said of the bout’s significance, especially in the fighters’ home country. “Look, I’ve been telling everybody, whoever wins this fight can literally be the president of Mexico. They’ve got novela actresses, they’ve got politicians tuned into this fight. It’s like Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jnr in a small way over there.”

Jason Langendorf is the former Boxing Editor of ESPN.com, was a contributor to Ringside Seat and the Queensberry Rules, and has written about boxing for Vice, The Guardian, Chicago Sun-Times and other publications. A member of the Boxing Writers Association of America, he can be found at LinkedIn and followed on X and Bluesky.