"I was comfortable that he could make the weight, but we did get together collectively and said what we need to do and we brainstormed; could he do it and how long would he need to do it. It was a collaboration. I think we were all on the same page and we all agreed...We had no doubts we can do it. Getting to the weight is not gonna be a problem. He is usually razor ripped at 175. I think at 168, Chad's probably gonna be at maybe 6% body fat, but strong. I never let Chad drain himself or dry out," stated Alex Murillo, strength & conditioning coach of light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson, who talked about the highly-anticipated September 8th showdown with super middleweight king Andre Ward. Check it out!

PC: You are the man responsible for getting Chad Dawson down to 168 pounds. Although the fight isn't until September, does the nutritional aspect of getting him down start now?

AM: No, nutrition-wise, I think we won't start focusing on it until we actually get to camp. When Chad goes through attrition, his body actually loses its muscle mass and he doesn't get fat, so my job is to put that muscle back on him. It's just gonna be the perfect balance of getting that muscle and taking on as little fat as we can towards the end of camp, so the nutrition will start right when I get to camp. If he starts now, it' gonna be pretty, I won't say hard to sustain, but he doesn't plateau like most fighters.

PC: I saw him out in Vegas for Mayweather/Cotto, and I know that wasn't too long after his fight with Bernard, but he didn't look like he had put on much. He was pretty lean still.

AM: (Laughing) Well, that's good news for me (laughing).

PC: Was this a collective decision amongst the team to decide if it would be a weight that Chad can make or did you guys already know he could get down to 168?

AM: I was comfortable that he could make the weight, but we did get together collectively and said what we need to do and we brainstormed; could he do it and how long would he need to do it. It was a collaboration. I think we were all on the same page and we all agreed. Nobody was like, "Nah, I don't think so." We had no doubts we can do it. Getting to the weight is not gonna be a problem. He is usually razor ripped at 175. I think at 168, he's probably gonna be at maybe 6% body fat, but strong. I never let Chad drain himself or dry out.

PC: That was actually my next question for you. We see so many guys that make moves like this, more so in mixed martial arts than boxing, but they lose 15 to 20 pounds in 2 days and things like that. That is not something you allow, right?

AM: No! I totally disagree with doing that. I totally don't believe in doing that. We want a progression of getting it off little by little by little, and the last week, staying 4 or 5 pounds within your fight weight. I don't believe in 2 days of not drinking water and drying out and just sweating, sweating, sweating. I don't believe in that. Chad has never had to do that, thank God; not since I've been with him anyway. We don't believe in that. We're gonna be sharp and ready and not dehydrated. The advantage we'll have is when he does put the weight back on, he's gonna be solid. He's not a guy that balloons up 20 pounds when he rehydrates.

PC: How will you guys approach the rehydration process to where he does rehydrate back up to a comfortable weight?

AM: Well, what we're going to do is, like always, Chad never misses a meal. Even if it's the week of the fight and he's a little bit over or whatever, he never misses a meal. The plan will be the week before the fight, we will turn up the workload a little bit more, just in the areas for more fat loss because the muscle is going to be there. The week before weigh-in week, we will turn up the workload just a little bit to get a little bit more off and not wait until the last minute to knock it off. We don't want to knock all of the weight off the week of the weigh-ins, so we will get it off before and get to a weight that we are real comfortable with the week before weigh-ins, and that way, the most he should be doing is maintaining and staying strong.

PC: To me, this fight is a big deal and this is what's right with boxing. People like to point to what's wrong with the sport, but a fight like this is what's right being that you have two young fighters in their primes throwing weight and everything out of the window and making it happen. How big is this for Chad to not just make it happen, but if he's able to pull it off?

AM: It's going to be a tremendous deal because a lot of people, from the comments I read, don't think he could do it. They think that Chad isÂ…just because he fights down to the level that his opponent's fight, if they're a slow starter, then he's a slow starter. If you got Andre Ward, who is going to come in aggressive, that's exactly what we want. He takes aggression with aggression and he adapts to his opponents. I think it's going to be a huge deal to see 68 and Chad really likes when he goes to fight the way he feels. The way he feels gives him a boost of confidence and the way he looks gives him a big boost in confidence. The way that training camp goes, it gives him a big boost in confidence. He was so ready for this last Bernard Hopkins fight that he said, "Look, we missed nothing in training camp. We had no distractions, no problems, the weight was easy, the work was hard, and sparring was good." When we accomplish all of those things in mind and we have no speed bumps, he feels 100% positive. So when he took this fight, he put a lot of faith in me to get the weight off. And whatever it is, we work so well together, Chad knows whatever I tell him to do, it's in his best interest. I'm not gonna have him do something stupid. He knows it. He knows I'm not intoÂ…you're never gonna hear anybody I work with involved in these performance enhancing drug scandals.

PC: I have to tackle that subject with you. Being a strength and conditioning guy and being the guy directly responsible for putting on and taking off weight while keeping strength and things like that, what can boxing do to fix this epidemic?

AM: Well, the problem is going to be how much do they want to invest in the testing. The testing is so expensive. It's only going to be some of the smaller name fighters getting away with it here soon because they are not being tested the way in which to find things. You got a lot of scientific information out there where if they say they found something in your urine and you get a great attorney to say, "Your test is inaccurate." So until they can come up with a test that can target all of these banned substances, it's going to be really difficult. But everybody has to be on the same page and that's the problem, they're not. When you're making your pro debut in Las Vegas, you're talking about spending almost $2,000 on medicals, so if you're not catching these guysÂ…these are just the guys that got caught. Just like in baseball, you know there is more out there. Imagine the guys who haven't got caught yet.

PC: The thing about boxing is you know your fight date so far in advance that you can get off of things at certain times and not get caught because the obvious would be not to take any short notice fights, and of course at the high level, they know when they are fighting 3, sometimes 4 months out.

AM: Oh yeah, because listen, they know how to cycle on and off to where it will be in there and then it won't be in there. I never studied so much into how to cycle it because I don't use the stuff. To me, it's way too great of a risk to put Chad into that position, or my reputation, because once one of your fighters test dirty, you're a dirty trainer, so I'm not gonna risk my reputation on even trying. If we can't do it the right way, it's not worth being done and so far, our formula of hard work and the legal supplements that we do use have been working and have been successful, so why cheat?

PC: I agree with that 100%. And with the fight being September 8th, when would you like to be in camp for this fight?

AM: I'm saying somewhere around the middle of July, maybe July 15th for myself. He likes to go and get acclimated. I think we may be doing camp, I'm not really sure, but possibly Vegas, for him to get acclimated to it. I know we got good sparring. We got Mt. Charleston and Red Rock. We were focused for Bernard. For this one, we are going to be even more focused and I can't wait. I know how fast Chad is and how strong Chad is and I know what his endurance is like, so that's the perfect combination to beat a guy like Ward. I don't care what Ward does, he' still going to be the smaller guy in there.

PC: Keep me posted on how camp is going when it gets started. I wish you guys the best of luck and I'm really looking forward to this one. Is there anything you want to say in closing?

AM: Thanks for all of the support for Chad Dawson. I know there are a lot of doubters out there and he is the underdog, but we don't mind being the underdog. I would say we are going to shock the world, but we won't be shocked. We are going to represent really well at the new weight class and the sky will be the limit after that. We will have 2 sets of belts at different weight classes.