By Erik Schmidt: Unbeaten World Boxing Council lightweight champion Edwin Valero (25-0, 25 KO’s) got some bad news yesterday when it was discovered that his work visa was denied for his November 14th fight against Humberto Soto, according to Fight News. This is really bad for Valero, because he would have had the chance to fight on the undercard of the Manny Pacquiao vs. Miguel Cotto fight at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas.

The fight would have given Valero a lot of much needed exposure and given him a chance to win new fans. Valero will now be fighting on December 12th.

Valero, 27, captured the WBC title in April with a 2nd round TKO over 39-year-old Antonio Pitalua. Since then, Valero has had problems finding a big named opponent to fight. He wants to fight the best in boxing, such as Juan Manuel Marquez and Manny Pacquiao. The problem is Valero doesn’t have the same star quality as they do at this time and still needs a number of fights against quality opposition before he’s ready to take on one of the top fighters on equal footing.

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Sylvester vs. Lorenzo on Saturday

This Saturday night, German Sebastian Sylvester (31-3, 15 KO’s) will be fighting Giovanni Lorenzo (27-1, 19 KO’s) in a fight for the vacant International boxing Federation middleweight title at the Jahnsportforum, Neubrandenburg, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.

The IBF middleweight title was vacated recently by champion Arthur Abraham when he moved up to the super middleweight division to compete at this weight class. This left his old IBF title vacant for the number #2 Sylvester to fight number #1 IBF ranked Lorenzo.

Although both Sylvester and Lorenzo have impressive records, both are deeply flawed fighters. The winner of this bout likely won’t hold on to the IBF title for long, because there are arguably better fighters than them coming along down the pike to challenge for the title in the near future.

Sylvester, 29, was badly schooled by Felix Sturm in a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision loss last year in November. For his part, the 28-year-old Lorenzo was defeated by 38-year-old Raul Marquez last year in a 12 round decision loss in June.

It’s hard to say which of these two fighters will win. Lorenzo has good skills, but he looked really lazy in his loss to Marquez last year and was badly outworked. Sylvester is very basic, and has few weapons aside from a predictable left-right combination. Sylvester has absolutely no punch variety to speak of.

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Roy Jones Jr. vs. Danny Green fight contract signed

The December 2nd bout between Roy Jones Jr. (54-5, 40 KO’s) and IBO cruiserweight champion Danny Green (27-3, 24 KO’s) will be taking place at the Acer Arena, in Sydney, Australia. Contracts for the fight have been signed reportedly, and the fight is good to go forward. Although this is a fight that the U.S. will probably care little about, it will be a big deal in Green’s native Australia, and it figures to be a sellout crowd due to Green’s popularity.

The bout will be held at cruiserweight, meaning that Jones, 40, will have to move up in weight for the bout. Jones recently defeated former IBF super middleweight champion Jeff Lacy last month by a 10th round stoppage on August 15th.

The performance was perhaps Jones’ best in many years, as he showed flashes of his former greatness, throwing multiple hooks to the head and body of Lacy throughout the fight. It was thought that Jones would use the victory over Lacy to catapult into a big money bout against someone like Bernard Hopkins.

However, Hopkins and Jones couldn’t come to a verbal agreement about a fight, so Jones has to settle for the 36-year-old Green. For his part, Green stopped Julio Cesar Dominguez in the 5th round on the undercard of the Jones-Lacy bout last month. For Green, it was his second fight of his comeback following a two year retirement form boxing.