All week, it's been a guessing game: Will Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., battling the flu, fight on Saturday night? Now we know the answer: No.
Chavez woke up with a 103-degree temperature on Tuesday and won't fight, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum told ESPN.com.
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The rest of Top Rank's "In Harm's Way" pay-per-view card will go on as scheduled at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif., but Chavez's middleweight main event with Pawel Wolak is off.
Chavez has been under the weather for several days and had missed a few days of training. Because of that, Chavez was struggling to make weight, so the bout had been changed from a 12-round fight at 160 pounds to a 10-rounder with a maximum weight of 165 pounds. And now it's off altogether.
Chavez was feeling well enough on Monday to work out at trainer Freddie Roach's Wild Card gym in Hollywood, Calif., but the temperature returned, Arum said.
"He looked like he had shaken it and he worked out Monday. I was there and I saw it," Arum said. "His legs were a little tight but he worked out OK. [Tuesday morning] he got up with a 103 fever. He tried. You can't fault the kid. You can't put him in a fight with a temperature. It is absolutely legitimate."
Instead of the Chavez-Wolak main event, Arum said he would elevate the scheduled co-feature, a 12-round bantamweight match between the Philippines' pound-for-pound-ranked Nonito Donaire (24-1, 16 KOs) and former bantamweight titlist Wladimir Sidorenko (22-2-2, 7 KOs) of Ukraine.
Donaire, a former flyweight and interim junior bantamweight titlist, is moving up to bantamweight and needs to win in order to preserve a Feb. 19 shot on HBO against unified titleholder Fernando Montiel.
Chavez first became ill on Thursday.
"He got sick last Thursday after sparring and we kind of knew something was wrong," strength coach Alex Ariza told ESPN.com. "He felt a little weak, but he finished 10 rounds [of sparring] but he kept telling Freddie he wasn't in the groove. We thought maybe it was just a bad day, but later that night when he did an interview he started getting the cold sweats.
"He got back in the ring on Monday. He did four rounds, but once he started hitting the mitts with Freddie, he had cramps in his legs and later that night when we went to my house, he had a low-grade fever. [Tuesday morning] he woke up around 7 when we were going to train and he had a higher fever, about 102 or 103, and we knew this was more serious than we thought. I reported to Bob and he said if the kid is sick, he's sick and there's nothing we can do about it between now and Saturday."
Ariza said they didn't want to give Chavez medication a doctor might prescribe because of concerns that something illegal would show up in Chavez's post-fight drug test.
Arum said Wolak (27-1, 17 KOs) would remain on the televised portion of the card and could face Mexico's Jose Pinzon (18-1-1, 12 KOs), although Wolak and his team wanted to view a video of Pinzon before committing to the bout.
Also on the card: lightweight titlist Humberto Soto (53-7-2, 32 KOs) of Mexico defends his belt against Urbano Antillon (28-1, 20 KOs) of Maywood, Calif., and featherweight contender Miguel Angel "Mikey" Garcia (23-0, 19 KOs) of Oxnard, Calif., faces Olivier Lontchi (18-1-2, 8 KOs) of Montreal.
"I'm not going to cancel the show," Arum said. "Anyone who wants a refund at the gate can get a refund. But you can't cancel the show and do that to the kids who were getting ready to fight for the past six or eight weeks. You have an obligation if you can to follow through on the card."
The main event had already been changed once before. Chavez was supposed to face former "Contender" star Alfonso Gomez. But he withdrew last week because of a torn ligament in his left elbow and was replaced by Wolak, a native of Poland living in Mount Arlington, N.J.
This is the second time a Chavez-Wolak fight has been called off. Wolak had been tapped to fight Chavez in September, but Chavez (41-0-1, 30 KOs), the son of the all-time great with the same name, ultimately elected not to fight while he worked out some issues with co-promoter Fernando Beltran.
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