By Jim Dower: Former two time world title challenger Josesito Lopez (31-6, 18 KO’s) was able to overcome a shaky performance to defeat 34-year-old Mike Arnaoutis (24-10-1, 11 KO’s) by an 8 round technical decision on Friday night at the Fantasy Springs Casino, in Indio, California, USA. The final judges scores were 77-74, 77-74, 76-75.

The fight was halted due to a bad cut over the left eye of Arnaoutis. He had problems seeing out of the eye after suffering the cut from an accidental head-butt in the 8th round.

Josesito was knocked down in the fight once, and he did not look impressive at all. The light hitting Arnaoutis was able to catch Josesito many times in the fight with shots that snapped his head around. It seemed that if this had been an opponent with a little bit of power then we might have seen Josesito getting stopped again. He didn’t look nearly as solid as he was when he beat Victor Ortiz last year. It could be that Lopez’s stoppage losses to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Marcos Maidana took something out of him physically and mentally, because he doesn’t look like the same fighter anymore.

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Other boxing results on the card:

Francisco Vargas UD 10 Jerry Belmontes
Hugo Centeno Jr TKO 9 Angel Osuna
Errol Spence TKO 1 Pipino Cuevas Jr
Joseph Diaz TKO 7 Carlos Rodriguez
Jermall Charlo KO 5 Joseph De los Santos
Kevin Watts KO 2 Alejandro Artiaga
Diego De La Hoya TKO 1 Abraham Rubio
Stephan Shaw TKO 1 Jose Hermosillo