By Dan Ambrose: Bob Arum appears to be reluctant to see his fighter IBF/WBA featherweight champion Yuriorkis Gamboa (20-0, 16 KO’s) fight his money making machine WBO featherweight champion Juan Manuel Lopez (30-0, 27 KO’s) and it’s pretty obvious to see why.

With the power and the crushing speed that Gamboa possesses, he would likely knock Lopez cold and diminish his money-making potential in the short term.

It would be like taking Lopez back to square one and it would take a while for him to work his way back to where he is now if ever does. Gamboa looks too for him and that’s perhaps why Arum doesn’t want to see Lopez bludgeoned into submission by the former 2004 Olympic Gold Medalist for Cuba. As such, Gamboa needs to try and quickly get a fight with Chris John (44-0-2, 22 KO’s), the WBA featherweight paper champion.

This would be a huge mismatch because John is going life and death with fighters like Rocky Juarez. Gamboa would destroy both of those fighters with ease. If the John doesn’t want the Gamboa fight, then Gamboa needs to move up in weight and try and take on one of the super featherweights like WBO champion Ricky Burns. That’s about the only interesting fight at the talent poor super featherweight division.

Gamboa then needs to move up to lightweight and take on someone like Brandon Rios or Humberto Soto. The ideal fight would be against Juan Manuel Marquez, but that’s not likely to happen because Marquez is very pick nowadays about who he fights.