By Chris Williams: Rather than finally stepping it up and facing Yuriorkis Gamboa or a top quality fighter that is fighting well, WBO featherweight champion Juan Manuel Lopez (30-0, 27 KO’s) is going to be matched up against Orlando Salido (34-11-2, 22 KO’s) on April 16th at the Coliseo Roberto Clemente, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This would have been a good fight had it taken place three years ago before Salido started getting regularly beaten but not now.

Salido, 30, is coming off a one-sided beat down against Gamboa in September last year, losing that fight by a 12 round decision and getting knocked down multiple times by Gamboa. This is a pretty awful choice if you ask me, but it’s not Lopez’s fault. Lopez’s promoter is Bob Arum, who should realize that it’s not a good practice of matching fighters coming off a loss against his champions. I’ve seen this with Manny Pacquiao and I thought it stunk then, but with Lopez, it’s just as bad, if not worse because he should have been put in with Gamboa ages ago instead of waiting.

Arum is thinking that the Lopez-Gamboa fight is going to be bigger by waiting longer, but the problem is neither Gamboa or Lopez are getting more popular because their opponents are so over-matched. Without competitive fights and good opponents, Lopez and Gamboa are stagnating and not building up huge fan bases.

I don’t know why Arum can’t see this. Putting Lopez in with Salido is like feeding Gamboa’s sloppy seconds to Lopez and expecting boxing fans to get excited about this. Salido doesn’t stand a chance against Lopez, and his fight with Gamboa really stunk to the high heavens. If Arum doesn’t want to match Lopez against Gamboa, then why not Chris John, Hozumi Hasegawa, Robert Guerrero, Jhonny Gonzalez, Juan Carlos Burgos, Christobol Cruz, Celestino Cabellero, Jason Litzau, Jorge Linares, Ricky Burns or Jorge Solis? Why does it have to be someone that’s coming off a loss like Salido? What a poor choice for Lopez. This isn’t going to win him any new fans.