By Eric Thomas: In pursuit of bigger fights and bigger paydays, World Boxing Council (WBC) lightweight champion Humberto Soto (56-7-2, 32 KO’s) is moving up in weight to the light welterweight division to take on fringe contender Jose Alfaro (25-7, 22 KO’s) in a 10 round scheduled bout on September 3rd at the Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico.

For the short term, Soto, 31, is hoping to get a nice pay against Erik Morales in the near future. However, that seems more like a pipe dream on Soto’s part, because Morales is gunning for bigger names.

He’s got a fight coming up against Lucas Matthysse for the WBC light welterweight title on September 17th, and is interested in avenging a defeat at the hands of Marcos Maidana from last April. Soto is someone that isn’t on Morales’s immediate radar because he’s got a lot of other opportunities for big fights against big named opponents right now.

Soto is going to have a hard time being successful at 140. He had a hard time beating a small lightweight in Urbano Antillon last year in December, and that’s not a good sign for Soto that he’ll be able to succeed against bigger, and much stronger fighters at 140. Perhaps Soto can pick up one of the paper belts at some point in time, but I wouldn’t give him any chance of beating the likes of Maidana, Robert Guerrero, Timothy Bradley or Amir Khan right now.

He’s too easy to hit and doesn’t have a big frame for the light welterweight division. If he lets a slugger like Maidana trade with him and that seems to be Soto’s style of fighting, he’s going to have a short run at light welterweight because Maidana will hurt him. Khan would simply outbox him and Bradley would smother him with his inside fighting.

Soto should get by Alfaro without too many problems. I say he should because Alfaro is a good fighter and gave Morales all he could ask for in a fight last year. I thought Alfaro should have gotten the nod in that fight, because he clearly outworked Morales. If Soto can’t get Alfaro out of there he’s going to have problems. Soto didn’t look at all good in beating Motoki Sasaki by a 11th round technical decision in his last fight on June 25th. Soto was clearly fading under the pressure in the last few rounds and didn’t look good.