By Allan Fox: Juan Manuel Lopez (31-2, 28 KO’s) received an incredibly stiff 1-year suspension earlier on Tuesday by the Puerto Rican Boxing Commission for Lopez having suggested in Lopez’s post-fight interview after his 10th round TKO loss to Orlando Salido last March that referee Roberto Ramirez had a gambling problem.

Although Lopez apologized for the remark repeatedly, it appears to have been not enough to keep him from receiving what could be the kiss of death on his boxing career by losing an entire year of his career for his comments.

In addition to the one-year suspension Lopez received, he also was given a fine $10,000 and 100 hours of community service. The later deal is kind of hard to understand because something you generally see when you’ve been penalized for breaking the law. It’s hard to understand something like that coming from a boxing commission.

This is pretty dramatic penalization by the Commission. How do you expect Lopez to lose an entire year of his career based on some poorly thought out comments that he said moments after he’d been badly hurt by punches to the head and stopped? For all we know he wasn’t able to think clearly when said these things. Getting hammered like that could have momentarily left him without his proper senses to where he could understand what he was saying was wrong. I personally thing taking a year from the guy for insulting an referee is way too high a price. It seems more like a legal matter rather than one where he should have lost a year of his career plus having to pay a $10,000 fine and 100 hours of community service.

I would see that Lopez can stay in Puerto Rico and take the one year or he could vote with his feet by moving to another country to try and resume his career without the lengthy suspension. Losing a year in your career for a suspension is pretty serious. It’s not like he’s an engineer and can easily make up for it when he goes back to work. Boxing is physical and if you lose that much of your career you may not ever be able to get back to where you were before.