By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions has decided to match their young cash cow fighter WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (40-0-1, 29 KO’s) up against Josesito Lopez (30-4, 18 KO’s) on September 15th rather than finding a junior middleweight contender or a champion to fight Alvarez. The deal has been agreed upon, and only the contracts are waiting to be signed.
The Alvarez-Lopez fight will be televised on regular non-pay-per-view Showtime and may possibly be shown on CBS. However, the bout may not be big enough to draw many fans away from the fight between WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. vs. Sergio Martinez, which will be shown on the same night on HBO in a PPV broadcast. It goes without saying that the Chavez Jr-Martinez bout is a much bigger fight. There’s no comparison.
Lopez is coming off of a 9th round stoppage victory over former WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz last month in a surprise victory. It probably would have been a loss for Lopez if Ortiz hadn’t quit after suffering a fractured jaw in two places. Lopez was behind on all three score cards and would have had to sweep the last three rounds in order to win the fight.
The fight was exciting and the victory really increased the 27-year-old Lopez’s stock, but here’s the thing: Although he was fighting well against Ortiz, he was still on his way to losing the fight against a limited Ortiz. Lopez doesn’t have the size to compete against a big junior middleweight like Alvarez. As it was, Lopez moved up in weight to fight Ortiz at 144.
Asking Lopez to move up another 10 pounds against a fighter that will be weighing over 160lbs, it’s obviously way too much to ask for from Lopez. He won’t be able to put that kind of weight on his slender frame without it slowing him down. Lopez really didn’t do much more than fight in spurts against Ortiz, which resulted in Lopez falling behind in the fight. Against Alvarez, who works nonstop in the ring, Lopez is going to get pummeled by him.
If the idea is to put on a good boxing show that will actually be competitive, then Golden Boy is really missing the boat with this match-up. If their idea is to attract fans by taking advantage of Lopez’s new popularity from the Ortiz fight, then I think they’ll accomplish their goal with that. Lopez, as overmatched as he is against Alvarez, will probably be a bigger draw than if Golden Boy matched Alvarez against fighters from his own weight class that would have a chance of beating him like Erislandy Lara, Austin Trout and Cornelius Bundrage.
It is sad when you have a champion in Alvarez who won his WBC belt by facing a welterweight in Matthew Hatton, and who has faced largely weak opposition since he picked up the title. And now he’s fighting a light welterweight in Lopez. It’s really disappointing to say the least. In Alvarez’s last fight, he was matched against a way past his best 40-year-old Shane Mosley in a mismatch that rivals the Alvarez-Lopez mismatch. Alvarez gave Mosley a terrible beating in a fight that was hard to watch because of how painfully one-sided it was. Since winning the WBC belt, Alvarez has been matched against these fighters: Ryan Rhodes, Alfonso Gomez, Kermit Cintron and Mosley. To some fans, they feel that Alvarez is still being matched like he’s a prospect rather than a champion, because he’s not facing the best fighters in the division despite having held the belt for over a year now. And this fight with Lopez is a bout against light welterweight. How is the WBC letting this happen?
Lopez fans will no doubt be happy about this fight and will see it as a competitive one. It won’t be. Lopez has no chance against Alvarez. He’s too light, too weak, and too limited in terms of his inability to fight for three minutes of every round. This is going to be a mismatch, and hopefully boxing fans don’t see it as a competitive fight because it won’t be.
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