A few questions for the older guys (I was only 6 or 7 when the fight happened): When Chavez and Whitaker fought was the catchweight considered a big deal? Who was the favourite going in? Who was being lined up for the winner?
Before the fight? Not at all. Mostly for the reason that neither man was really a fully fledged welterweight. Whitaker, who held the WBC welterweight title going into the fight had a couple of years earlier been a lightweight, and Chavez had been at 140 for years and fighting keep busy fights at welter in between his 140 title fights. If anything it was probably thought that having the fight at a catchweight was a good thing, to ensure that neither man was too far from their best. And that they could bill it as a fight with Chavez going for a belt in his fourth weight class added more lustre to the fight. After the fight? Well Chavez complained that he was too small for the weight. Ideally Chavez would have wanted it at 140, but at 140, there would have been no welterweight belt on the line. Considering that he only came in at 142 though, it's unlikely he puts in a much better performance at 140. Whitaker perhaps wouldn't have been as strong but imo, at 140 Whitaker would have been a tad quicker and it would have evened out. Whitaker was a 2-1 underdog going in, but it seemed to me he was getting better than 2-1 odds from the media, even though Chavez was still the favourite. A Terry Norris fight was being talked up for the winner, but that talk soon died out when Norris was shockingly upset by Simon Brown. Given that Brown was an ex-Buddy Mc-Girt victim, Whitaker instead chose to clear up the waters with Buddy after their close first encounter, and Chavez went back down to 140 to defend against Randall.
