Humberto Soto to fight Jose Alfaro on 9/3; was offered to fight Maidana on 8/27

By Boxing News - 08/21/2011 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: Former two-time world champion Humberto Soto 56-7-2, 32 KO’s) was recently offered to fight WBA light welterweight champion Marcos Maidana on August 27th, but instead of that great fight, Soto has decided to take on trail horse Jose Alfaro (25-7, 22 KO’s) in a scheduled 10 round bout on September 3rd at the Estadio Centenarios, Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico.

Alfaro has lost four out of his last nine bouts. Soto, 31, is supposed to be stepping up to the light welterweight division to try and weight. However, Alfaro is a lightweight and not a light welterweight, which makes you wonder about the logic in taking this fight instead of the much more interesting bout against Maidana. Alfaro has Yusuke Kobori, Antonio DeMarco, Erik Morales and Yoshiro Kamegal in the last three years. This is obviously going to be an easy fight for Soto, but one that doesn’t make any sense at all.

If Soto wants to fight at light welterweight, shouldn’t he be at least be fighting light welterweights and not more lightweights?

Soto is coming off a 11th round technical decision over Motoki Sasaki. Soto declined fighting a rematch with Urbano Antillon, which a lot of boxing fans didn’t understand because their previous fight in December 2010 was one of the best fights of 2010. It seemed like a natural for Soto to fight Antillon again but he chose not to. Soto’s fights after the Antillon bout have been disappointing match-ups against little known Fidel Monterrosa Munoz and Sasaki. It seems like Soto is shooting himself in the foot by not taking on better fights when offered.