Marcos Maidana vs. Josesito Lopez on June 8th on Showtime in Carson, California

By Boxing News - 03/01/2013 - Comments

maidana32434By Chris Williams: Former WBA light welterweight champion Marcos Maidana (33-3, 30 KO’s) and Josesito Lopez (30-5, 18 KO’s) will be facing each other on June 8th on Showtime in a tripleheader at the Home Depot Center, in Carson, California, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN.

There’s no word about who the other fighters will be, but the Maidana-Lopez fight will be the headliner.

This fight had been talked about taking place on April 20th, but Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer is pushing it back a couple of months for some reason.

Maidana, #2 WBA, can’t afford to blow it in this fight because he’s on course to face Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the near future. Maidana is one of the six approved opponents for Mayweather for his six-fight contract on Showtime/ CBS. All Maidana has to do is keep winning and he’ll likely get the fight with Mayweather.

Lopez doesn’t have the same kind of power that Maidana does, and if he tries to mix it up with him the same way that he did against Victor Ortiz and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, then we could see Lopez get taken out quickly in this fight.

Maidana has way too much power for Lopez to go toe-to-toe with him. Lopez broke Ortiz’s jaw last year in stopping him in the 9th, and he had Ortiz looking really uncomfortable with his brawling style of fighting.

Lopez won’t have the same kind of success against Maidana because his game is built around that kind of fighting. Lopez will be doing Maidana a huge favor if he chooses to fight him like that because Maidana won’t have to chase him down.

Lopez was halted by Canelo in the 5th round last September, and ended up getting knocked down three times in the fight before it was stopped in the 5th. It was a case of Canelo having too much size and strength for Lopez, who moved up two divisions to face Canelo.

Lopez needs to change his fighting style if he plans on beating Maidana because he can’t continue to use the same brawling style that he used as a light welterweight.



Comments are closed.