By Dan Ambrose: Juan Manuel Lopez (31-1, 28 KO’s) is promising things will be different in his rematch with WBO featherweight champion Orlando Salido (37-11-2, 25 KO’s) on March 10th at the Coliseo Roberto Clemente, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Lopez, 28, has supposedly changed his game and will be more elusive to Salido’s powerful right hands, which he used effectively to stun and eventually take out the Puerto Rican Lopez last April.

However, Salido doesn’t believe Lopez can change the way he fights; believing that Lopez will revert back to his basic nature once he starts getting rocked by Salido’s right hands in their important rematch. Lopez may say he’s going to fight different, but after seven years as a pro, it’s highly doubtful that he’ll be any different from what he’s been in the past – a mostly one dimensional southpaw slugger.

Changing your fighting style after many, many years is incredibly difficult to do and most fighters fail miserably when they try. It’s like someone taking Karate for eight weeks and then getting into a street fight and finding that none of the Karate actually works in real life. It takes longer than eight weeks for a fighter to get good at a new fighting style, and I doubt Lopez will have the discipline to stay committed to his new change for more than a round at best. As soon as Lopez gets tagged hard by Salido, he’ll angrily try and retaliate and start getting hit even more. It’ll be a feedback cycle where Lopez gets tagged leading to him trying to retaliate instead of boxing and that in turn leading to Lopez getting tagged even more by Salido.

The outcome of this fight is very important to Lopez and his promoters at Top Rank, because they want to see him win so they can move him like a chess piece to fights against the like of Yuriorkis Gamboa, Brandon Rios and Nonito Donaire, all Top Rank fighters. A loss for Lopez against Salido will remove any possibility for Lopez to get matched up against any of those guys in the near future. Lopez would need even more rebuilding after a second loss to Salido, and I doubt that his promoter Bob Arum would be foolish enough to put Lopez in with Salido for a third time, hoping he can somehow get lucky and beat the tough Mexican.