By Chris Williams: Rather than stepping up and finally facing Juan Manuel Lopez after all these years, WBA Super World/IBF featherweight champion Yuriorkis Gamboa (19-0, 15 KO’s) will be taking on WBA interim super featherweight champion Jorge Solis (40-2-2, 29 KO’s) on March 26th at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. This isn’t the fight that boxing fans want to see of Gamboa. They want to see him face Lopez. They know he can beat a guy like Solis, because that guy already got spanked by Christobal Cruz in 2009.

This is more of a time waster, and Gamboa’s promoter Bob Arum isn’t priming the pump by putting Gamboa with obscure opponents that fans don’t care about. Solis may be a decent fighter and one of the top contenders in the super featherweight division, but as far as the U.S boxing public goes, he’s completely unknown to the them and he’s not who they want to see Gamboa fight.

If Arum is smart, he’s going to quit trying to build up the Lopez-Gamboa fight by putting these guys in fights with other guys and choose instead to get it over with and put them with each other. I can understand Arum waiting for the Gamboa-Lopez fight if those guys were facing quality fighters that boxing fans were excited about, but that’s not happening. Arum isn’t putting Gamboa with guys like Hozumi Hasegawa, Jhonny Gonzales, Chris John or Danial Ponce De Leon. Instead we’re seeing Gamboa against Solis, a 31-year-old fighter who looked out of his league against Cruz and Manny Pacquiao in the past. Gamboa is failing to win fans or attention by rolling over little known fighters. He needs to face someone really good or face Lopez. This is another throw away fight.