Viloria Decisions Lopez

By Boxing News - 02/19/2008 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: Former World Boxing Council junior flyweight champion Brian Viloria (21-2, 12 KOs) won an unimpressive 8-round unanimous decision over Cesar Lopez (20-6, 4 KOs on Saturday night at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Viloria, 27, ranked # 3 in the WBC junior flyweight division, knocked Lopez down in the fifth round of the fight, but overall he looked far from his previous form from two years earlier. The final judges’ scores were 78-73, 78-73 and 77-74. However, Viloria, once an incredibly fast puncher, appears to have slowed down in the past year, as he no longer has the blazing fast hands that he did earlier in his career.

His defense, never good to begin with, is even more of a problem now that his hand speed has began to diminish. Lopez, a fighter not ranked in the top 10, was able to hit Viloria repeatedly with left hooks and right hands, particularly in the early rounds of the fight. It wasn’t supposed to be a competitive fight, because Lopez is well below Viloria in terms of skill and experience against top opposition, yet Lopez was able to score over and over in many of the rounds. Viloria still can punch, as he showed in the fifth round, but he should have been able to put Lopez away but his shots had little effect on him.

It seems that since Viloria moved up in weight from junior flyweight, his power is much less impressive than before. However, that could be because his speed has gone down along with it, making his punches much easier to track. Lopez came at Viloria hard in the opening rounds of the fight, pressuring him and making him fight harder than he wanted to.
Though Viloria was often able to stop Lopez in his tracks with right hands and jabs, he was still absorbing far too much punishment than he should have going up against a fighter that was so far out of his league. By the 5th round, Lopez was beginning to fade, which made it possible for Viloria to knock him down. Lopez, to his credit, came and took the fight to Viloria in the subsequent rounds, but the knockdown along with the other rounds that Lopez had given away due to inaction, caused him to come up short in the scoring for the fight.

Viloria, however, needs to consider dieting back down to junior flyweight, because I don’t see anything for him at this weight class. Apparently, Viloria would like to fight IBF flyweight champion Nonito Donaire in the near future. I think that personally that’s a bad idea, because Viloria doesn’t match up well with Donaire, nor does he with any of the other flyweight champions. I see Viloria getting badly stopped in the early rounds of the fight. If he’s after a payday, then that’s fine. He’ll get a payday against Donaire, but he has little chance of beating him.

Viloria hasn’t seemed like the same fighter since losing to both Edgar Sosa and Omar Nino Romero in failed attempts at the WBC junior flyweight title. Though he lost to both fighters, I still think that Viloria is better off staying in that division or perhaps moving down to strawweight (105 lbs) where Viloria could perhaps recapture some of his fleeting power. As it is, I don’t see him going anywhere as a flyweight.