By Dan Ambrose: Former two division world champion Humberto Soto (64-8-2, 35 KOs) vs. John Molina (27-4, 22 KOs) has been added to the September 13th Mayhem card headlined by WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather vs. Marcos Maidana at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Of all the undercard fights on the Mayweather-Maidana 2 fight card this has got to be considered to the best one on paper at least. Soto, 33, was one of the best fighters in the super featherweight and lightweight divisions when he held titles in those weight classes, but he hasn’t been the same fighter since he moved up to 140.
Soto was blown out in 5 rounds by a much stronger Lucas Matthysse in 2012. Soto has since won his last 4 fights against weak opposition. He hasn’t been in a hurry to get back in with the big boys since the loss to Matthysse, and you can’t blame him.
Soto doesn’t have the power at 140 to match up with guys like Danny Garcia, Ruslan Provodnikov and of course Matthysse.
Molina is coming off of an 11th round knockout loss to Matthysse in his last fight in April of this year. Molina gave Matthysse a lot of problems in knocking him down twice before Matthysse made some adjustments and dominated the rest of the fight.
Molina would seem to have too much power for Soto right now. Soto is ranked #6 WBC and #9 IBF, while Molina isn’t ranked in the top 15 at lightweight or light welterweight.
The Mayhem card has a number of fights that are nowhere near as interesting as this, such as Alfredo Angulo vs. James De La Rosa, Leo Santa Cruz vs. Manuel Roman, and Mickey Bey vs. IBF lightweight champion Miguel Vazquez.
The Molina-Soto fight is far from a great fight given how bad Soto looked in getting blown out by Matthysse, but it’s a great one compared to the other fights on the card. This one stands out head and shoulders, even though I can’t see either Soto or Molina ever capturing a world title at 140. I can’t see it.
After Danny Garcia steps away, Adrien Broner and Viktor Postol will fight it out over the vacant WBC or IBF titles. Lamont Peterson, the IBF champ, is too much for these guys, and WBO champ Chris Algieri is too tall for them.
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