lopez443 By Allan Fox: Former WBO featherweight/WBO super bantamweight champion Juan Manuel Lopez (33-3, 30 KO’s) says he has no plans on retiring after a 4th round TKO loss to Mikey Garcia (32-0, 27 KO’s) last Saturday night at the America Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas, Juanma isn’t sure whether he’ll stay at 126 or move up to 130 to compete at super featherweight.

Juanma said to Elnuevodia.com “Yes, yes [I’ll continue fighting]. That’s a no-brainer, but the word retirement is not in my mouth…I will rest and analyze whether to stay at 126 or move up to 130. I made 126 fine.”

Mikey Garcia could move up 130. He’s talking about having his next fight take place at that weight and if he does well, he’ll stay at that weight. If Mikey fights at super featherweight, that’s one less contender for Juanma to worry about at 126. However, that doesn’t mean he would have easily sailing. If Juanma wants to contend for the WBO featherweight title he’d have to compete with the likes of Gary Russell Jr. and Orlando Cruz, and those guys are tough fighters.

If Juanma had problems with Mikey’s speed and power, he might have a lot more problems with Russell Jr. because he’s much faster than Mikey and he hits plenty hard. That would be a very tough fight for Juanma to win at this stage in his career, and I think it wouldn’t be a smart thing for Juanma to take that fight. He’d be better off looking to go after IBF champion Evgeny Gradovich or WBA champ Chris John. Those are beatable fighters. Juanma just needs to make sure that he doesn’t have to face Russell Jr. for whichever champion he goes after because that’s not a good fight for him.

Juanma was knocked down twice by Mikey last Saturday, and there are a lot of boxing fans that think Juanma is a shot fighter and needs to retire. You can’t really know whether he is just from the Mikey fight because Mikey defeated Orlando Salido easily as well, and Salido certainly isn’t a shot fighter. Mikey knocked him down four times in beating him by an 8th round technical decision.