By Dan Ambrose: According to Steve Kim of Maxboxing.com, he’s reporting on his twitter that WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (40-0-1, 29 KO’s) will be facing WBC Silver welterweight champion Josesito Lopez (30-4, 18 KO’s) on September 15th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Kim said “Canelo facing Lopez…I just hope Top Rank doesn’t get complacent and put on shizzy PPV undercard for September 15th with Alvarez-Lopez on the other bill.”
The Alvarez-Lopez fight has yet to be confirmed by Alvarez’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions, but it looks like that’s going to be Golden Boy’s pick. There had been talk from Univision that Alvarez would be facing 38-year-old Ricardo Mayorga next, and that was something that few boxing fans were in favor of. However, if Lopez is the pick it’s not much better.
Lopez is basically a light welterweight who moved up in weight to fight Victor Ortiz recently last month. Lopez fought his heart out, but was still well behind in the fight in the 9th round when Ortiz suddenly quit after the round had ended, complaining of a broken jaw. Since he could no longer continue fighting, it gave Lopez the victory that he likely wouldn’t have received had Ortiz lasted out the last three rounds of the fight.
Alvarez will be a lot heavier and stronger, as well as the much better fighter. I don’t see Alvarez quitting in this fight, and I think it’s going to be a sick mismatch between a blown up light welterweight and a legitimate junior middleweight. I’m surprised Golden Boy is putting this mismatch together, if it actually is, because Lopez is not a junior middleweight and he’s going to get the stuffing beaten out of him in this fight. In a war of uppercuts, Alvarez wins seven days a week, 365 days a year. The uppercut seems to be Lopez’s best weapon. I wish him luck trying to land those against Alvarez.
Golden Boy had better options for Alvarez than Lopez, such as Erislandy Lara, Austin Trout and Cornelius Bundrage, but it looks like they’re not going to go with any of them. I’d pick all three of those guys to easily beat Lopez. With Lara, it would be too easy, but Trout and Bundrage would also bludgeon him into submission. What an awful choice.
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