By Dan Ambrose: Sometimes fighters do really well until they reach a certain level of competition where they ceiling out in their development. It doesn’t matter much you teach that fighter, he’s still limited to that level based on flaws in his chin, stamina or speed. It looks as if former WBO featherweight champion Juan Manuel Lopez (30-1, 27 KO’s) has reached his peak and run head long into the ceiling of what he’s capable of in being stopped in the 8th round by Orlando Salido last weekend.
There is probably nothing the 27-year-old Lopez could have done to change the outcome of this fight. It looked like his defense and movement was top notch. The problem was Lopez faced a stronger fighter that had a better chin, better power and better stamina. Salido was better than Lopez in almost every department you could think of. It wasn’t even close. The only thing that Lopez had going for him was his ability to fight slick. Lopez was good at that, but you have to have the power and the chin to beat guys like Lopez, and he had neither.
Now there has been talk that Lopez’s problems from the Salido fight will be solved if he dedicates himself training and gets a new trainer to help him with his defensive liabilities. I see this as a waste of time for Lopez. He can’t fix his problems because he is too limited to improve enough to ever beat a fighter like Salido. Face it: Lopez fought a superior fighter and there is no way that Lopez can change it. He is what he is. Lopez is like the Joe Frazier to Salido’s George Foreman. It doesn’t matter how many times Frazier fought Foreman, he always lost. The same applies for Lopez. He’s going to get spanked in the rematch with Salido, and hopefully he and his promoter Bob Arum learn a lesson from that fight. They’ll recognize that it’s better to walk away rather than fight when facing superior talent.
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