By Dan Ambrose: Former WBO featherweight champion Juan Manuel Lopez (30-1, 27 KO’s) is still clinging to the hopes of a big money fight against Yuriorkis Gamboa in the future despite the fact that Gambos is moving up in weight to the super featherweight division and beyond to chase bigger fights against the likes of Manny Pacquiao.

Lopez plans on chasing after Gamboa by moving up in weight after two more fights. Lopez, 28, has a fight coming up against Mike Oliver next month on October 1st in Puerto Rico. After that, Lopez wants to try and avenge a knockout loss to Orlando Salido. It sounds like a hopeless situation, however, because Lopez was pretty well dominated by Salido last April in an 8th round stoppage, and it may take a minor miracle for Lopez to beat him in a rematch.

Unless Lopez’s promoter wants to set the Gamboa-Lopez fight up anyway before or after a Salido rematch – and another likely loss for Lopez – then that may be the only way a Gamboa v. Lopez fight can happen realistically. Lopez doesn’t have the power, chin or the frame to move up in weights effortlessly the way that Gamboa can and this could turn out bad for Lopez.

This could have been avoided had promoter Bob Arum not waited as long as he did trying to let a Lopez-Gamboa fight “marinate” to maximize the most amount of popularity and money that the fight could attract. While waiting and letting it marinate, Lopez got whipped by Salido and beaten so bad that it’s not even interesting to contemplate throwing Lopez in with Gamboa at this point. The way that Lopez was beaten by Salido, the smart thing to do would be to keep Lopez away from Salido permanently because the Mexican fighter was just so much better than him.

But in order to still get the Gamboa money fight, Lopez probably has to beat Salido in order to reestablish his credibility with boxing fans. I personally think it’s stupid. Salido will beat Lopez again, Gamboa will continue to ignore him and Lopez will be far less better off than he is now after a second loss. What Lopez needs to do is target one of the weaker featherweight champions so he can pick up an easy paper title and then milk it like he was doing with his WBO strap at super bantamweight. It might not hurt Lopez if he moves back down to super bantamweight either, because he could then get a fight with Nonito Donaire before Gamboa does.