By Eric Thomas: Unbeaten middleweight prospect J’Leon Love (15-0, 8 KO’s) will be in action in a scheduled 10 round bout on the undercard of the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero card on May 4th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, according to Dan Rafael.
Also on the same card will be former IBF bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz (20-0-1, 13 KO’s) possibly facing 37-year-old former two division world champion Rafael Marquez (41-8, 37 KO’s) in a fight that will take place in the super bantamweight division due to Santa Cruz having moved up in weight.
Love, 25, is coming off of a 10 round unanimous decision win over Derrick Findley last month on February 23rd. Love won the fight by the scores of 100-90, 99-91 and 99-91, but he was far from impressive in that fight.
You can make a strong case that Love only deserved to win the fight by a couple of rounds at best, because Findley really took the fight to him and appeared to win at least four of the rounds easily.
Love has a lot of hype surrounding him, but he lacks power, blazing speed and the work rate to make him a major player at 160. You can see that not just from his poor effort against Findley, but in all of his fights.
Love just doesn’t have the talent to compete with the upper tier of the middleweight division. The only thing he has in his favor is his youth, and that should help him wait out guys like Sergio Martinez until he retires.
Santa Cruz, 24, is moving up to 122 lbs. to look for bigger and better things at this weight class. He wasn’t finding any big named opponents at bantamweight, and he finally decided it was better to move up in weight to find better opposition at 122. He may need to move up to featherweight if he wants to get the bigger fights because that appears to be where everyone will be headed in the near future.
Marquez has lost three out of his last five fights and he really needs to think about retiring at some point. He’s not kept his skills in the same way that his older brother 39-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez has as he’s gotten older.
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