By Dan Ambrose: Juan Manuel Lopez and Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. will be facing each other two months from now on October 8th in a scheduled 10 round bout in the featherweight division at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This is an interesting fight between two former world champions that have seen better days in their careers.
The 33-year-old Lopez (34-5, 31 KOs) hasn’t fought in almost two years since his 2nd round knockout defeat to Jesus Cuellar in September 2014. For Lopez that was his second straight defeat and his third loss in his last four fights.
Lopez’s career started going downhill dramatically three years before that when he was beaten by Orlando Salido by an 8th round knockout in April 2011. Lopez lost to Salido in the rematch in getting stopped in the 10th round.
It’s going to be interesting to see if Lopez can make the weight for the fight because he’s looked big at times when not fighting. In recent photos of Lopez, he looked to be carrying a lot of weight. His neck and chin appeared to be thick with fat. Lopez has two months to take off the fight, so he should be able to get down to the featherweight if he trains hard. However, even when Lopez has been in shape in his last few fights of his career, he still struggled and lost. It didn’t appear to be the weight that was causing him problem.
It looked more like a fighter that had put in a lot of mileage in his career and didn’t have much left to compete against the better fighters. With Lopez not having fought in two years, it’s hard to picture him a y better than he was the last time h fought and was beaten. However, Lopez won’t have to worry about fighting a really good fighter because Vazquez Jr. has faded just as badly as Lopez in his own boxing career.
Lopez is a former two division world champion. He held the World Boxing Organization super bantamweight title from 2008 to 2010 before vacating it. Lopez held the WBO featherweight title from 2010 to 2011. He lost the belt against Orlando Salido.
The 32-year-old Vazquez Jr. has lost six out of his last ten fights dating back to 2011. Vazquez was beaten twice in 2015 and once in 2014. He’s three out of his last four fights. His defeats came to Rafael Rivera, Fernando Vargas and Marvin Sonsona. The good news is that Vazquez Jr. has been losing to decent fighters. The bad thing about it is that none of these guys are major players in their respective divisions.
Vazquez Jr. was beaten by Yasutaka Ishimoto in 2014, Nonito Donaire in 2012 and Jorge Arce in 2010. Vazquez previously held the WBO super bantamweight title from 2009 to 2011 after beating Marvin Sonsona by a 4th round knockout to capture the title. Vazquez was able to hold onto the WBO title for two successful defenses in beating Zsolt Bedak and Ivan Hernandez before losing the belt to Arce in 2011. Vazquez Jr. was a very good fighter during the prime of his career. Unfortunately for him, his prime was a small period of time.