By Dan Ambrose: Former two division world champion Juan Manuel Lopez (34-3, 31 KO’s) is looking to get a big fight against Jorge Arce (63-7-2, 48 KO’s) next, possibly on the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Marcos Maidana fight card on May 3rd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. If Lopez can beat Arce, he then would like to face his former conqueror Orlando Salido in a third fight. Salido has twice stopped Lopez, and he wants to try and avenge those two losses if possible.
Lopez defeated Daniel Ponce De Leon by a 2nd round TKO last Saturday night in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, and the win has at least kept Lopez’s career afloat a little bit longer. I wouldn’t say that it rejuvenated Lopez, because he would likely still have major problems if he were put in with a good super featherweight like Mikey Garcia, who destroyed him in four rounds last year in June, and Takashi Uchiyama. But Lopez proved that he can still beat De Leon after all these years.
“We achieved a great victory with which I was unable to silence those who did not believe in me ,” Lopez told ESPN Deports. “In my opinion my next opponent should be Jorge ‘ Travieso ‘ Arce. If I get to choose right now, as do the fight with Arce, then also a third with Salido. But it would have to be at 130 pounds.”
130 lbs. would be perfect for Salido, because he’s already talking about moving up in weight to the super featherweight division after failing to make weight for his win over Vasyl Lomachenko earlier this month. Salido lost his WBO featherweight title on the scales, but he was still able to go out and school the inexperienced Lomachenko and make him look bad with all the holding he was doing the entire fight.
I’m not sure that Arce would accept a fight against Lopez, because he doesn’t have a title, and that’s something that little Arce wants. Arce is making a comeback to specifically try and capture a world title at featherweight, as that would give him a 5th division world title. His chances of accomplishing that are very small, because there simply are no weak champions in the featherweight division right now for Arce to pick over to win a paper title.
If Lopez has to fight Salido next, he’s going to lose badly. Salido really has his number, and it would only be a matter of time before he beat Lopez down and halted him the way he did in their previous two fights. Lopez can still score early knockouts against limited sluggers like Ponce De Leon, but when he’s forced to take punishment for a fight that goes past the 6th, he wears down and gets stopped. Salido would drag Lopez into the deep end and stop him by the 8th round at the latest.
Arce is a pretty limited fighter at this point in his career, and he clearly doesn’t belong in the featherweight division. He’s too small and not nearly strong enough to compete at that weight against the best fighters. Lopez would definitely knock him out and likely make it look easy. It would be a good payday for both fighters, but it wouldn’t further Arce’s goal of capturing another world title before he retires.
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