Josesito Lopez to fight in January

By Boxing News - 10/19/2012 - Comments

Image: Josesito Lopez to fight in JanuaryBy Dan Ambrose: WBC Silver welterweight champion Josesito Lopez (30-5, 18 KO’s) will be back in the welterweight division defending his 147 pound trinket in January against a still to be determined opponent according to the Koncrete Jungle. Lopez, 28, was hand-picked by Golden Boy Promotions to fight their future star WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez last month and things ended up badly for Lopez with him getting knocked down three times in getting stopped in the 5th round.

With that horrible fight out of the way, Lopez is ready to start fighting guys more his own size and strength at 147. Lopez is going to have to be matched carefully because there’s still a lot of fighters in the welterweight division that he doesn’t match up with. Lopez really lucked out in beating Victor Ortiz last June in getting a 9th round stoppage win because Ortiz was winning the fight and likely would have cruised to a victory if not for his broken jaw.

The problem that Lopez has is he’s too much of a slugger but without the power or the chin to fight in that kind of style. He was able to get away with that at light welterweight against smaller guys without a whole lot of talent, but at welterweight Lopez isn’t going to go far unless he’s matched like a surgeon against guys that aren’t big punchers.

An ideal opponent would be Paulie Malignaggi, but Lopez isn’t going to get that fight unless he can work himself into that position by defeating a couple of name fighters.

Lopez, 28, is young enough to possibly hang around and pick up one of the welterweight paper titles and hold it down for a little while. However, he’s not going to beat the top guys like Devon Alexander, Randall Bailey, Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr.



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