Juan Manuel Lopez was at the height of his professional career on January 23, 2010, after an impressive performance in a seventh-round stoppage of Steven Luevano in a fight for the World Boxing Organization featherweight title in The Theater at Madison Square Garden.
Lopez improved to 28-0 that night and won a world championship in a second weight class. Fans and media were drooling over the possibility of a featherweight unification bout with Yuriorkis Gamboa a few months down the line.
Lopez was included on many pound-for-pound lists and was hailed as one of boxing?s next big stars.
But Top Rank chairman Bob Arum, who promotes Lopez, opted to not make a Lopez-Gamboa fight at that stage. He wanted to let the fight build and become more lucrative financially.
It was a risky decision because of the near-miss Lopez had against journeyman Rogers Mtgawa in 2009, when Lopez was struggling to stay on his feet in the waning seconds of the bout.
Waiting is almost always a prudent move for a boxing promoter if the only goal is to max out every single cent. But it?s a risk: If either or both fighters lose, it often diminishes the big fight significantly.
After Lopez?s win over Luevano, which came on the same card as an impressive Gamboa victory over Rogers Mtagwa, Arum defended not making a Lopez-Gamboa bout in mid-2010 because he wanted to raise both of their profiles and, as a result, make the bout more financially lucrative.
?If I have to wait until 2011, that?s what I?ll do,? Arum said. ?I don?t want to make this fight too early because then that?s taking money out of these kids? pockets.?
The fight is now apparently dead forever. Lopez was stopped on Saturday by a brilliant Orlando Salido. Lopez has been stopped by Salido in two of his past three bouts and his status as an elite contender is now very much in question. Worse, Gamboa has moved to featherweight and has many bigger fights ahead of him.
They are two men going in opposite directions.
That simply shows the risk a promoter takes by holding a fight. Arum made the third bout between Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez much bigger by not caving to pressure in 2008, after they had met for the second time, to do an immediate rematch.
Golden Boy?s Richard Schaefer harangued Arum for not agreeing to make the immediate rematch and sending Pacquiao off in another direction. Most of the boxing media sided with Schaefer.
But Arum was proven right when Pacquiao-Marquez III was a massive hit ? both at the box office, where it did an $11.6 million gate, and on pay-per-view, where it sold in excess of 1.4 million units.
He was dead wrong, though, in opting to wait to make Lopez-Gamboa.
There is still a market for Lopez because he?s a highly entertaining fighter, but there remains a question as to whether he?ll ever be the same fighter after the beatings he absorbed from Salido.
Knowing when to make a fight is one of the trickiest decisions in boxing. Arum is usually among the best at it, as his track record would indicate.
In Lopez?s case, however, there is no gray area: Arum not only blew it, he blew it big time.
