By Dave Lahr: Forget about Bernabe Concepcion (28-3, 15 KO’s) having any chance at beating WBO featherweight champion Juan Manuel Lopez (28-0, 25 KO’s) tonight when the two fighters meet at the Coliseo Jose Miguel Agrelot, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Concepcion has no chance of winning this fight.

Unless there’s a catastrophe like an earthquake, Concepcion will lose and will lose badly to the talented 27-year-old Lopez. I just hope Concepcion doesn’t lose his cool and start fouling nonstop. Hopefully, the referee will be ready for anything and quickly penalize or disqualify Concepcion if he experiences a meltdown and starts blasting away at Lopez after the rounds end.

The only real question about this fight is whether Lopez will knock Concepcion out or not.

I’m leaning towards a fairly early knockout, say by the 6th, possibly the 7th. Concepcion, 22, is a decent featherweight with some skills, but whole lot of flaws. Concepcion is good against fighters that stand directly I front of him and don’t move much. But Concepcion is small for a featherweight at only 5’4”, and probably has no business fighting at this weight if he wants to win a title.

The 5’7” Lopez, who is a much bigger puncher, will be literally towering over Concepcion tonight and it’s almost look like two fighters from different divisions going at each other. After Concepcion loses tonight, he may want to seriously consider moving back down to the super bantamweight division where his lack of size and power won’t be such a liability for him.

While he’s at it, Concepcion needs to trim off some of that useless muscle he’s put on in his upper body and start working on flexibility and speed. He looks like a short body builder when he fights and doesn’t seem to have the flexibility needed to respond quickly to heated action.

I don’t see Concepcion capable of winning a round of action against a big puncher like Lopez. This is going to be one-way traffic with Concepcion taking terrible punishment until Lopez puts him out of his mercy with a big power shot in rounds six or seven.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Lopez ends this fight early with a stoppage in the 1st or 2nd round, because Concepcion throws these wide swings like a bodybuilder and isn’t able to put his guard back up before he gets nailed. This happened over and over again in Concepcion’s 7th round disqualification loss to Steven Luevano last year.

The weird part about Concepcion is that he looks like he would be a big puncher to look at him. He’s got all that muscle on his upper body, but when he punches, he looks so weak and doesn’t produce power. Since his muscle isn’t helping him be a bigger puncher and only seems to make him slow, he might as well trim it off and look for more quickness instead.

It’s too late obviously for Concepcion to do anything before his fight with Lopez, so he’s pretty much in for a beating either way you look at it. He just needs to keep his cool, take shots and pray that he can make it to the final bell in a one-sided loss.