Canelo Vs. Lopez: Win Or Lose, Lopez Needs Big Performance For Future Opportunities

Josesito Lopez is not supposed to be in this position, fighting Saul "Canelo" Alvarez tonight in a Mexican Independence Day weekend main event. He was supposed to be the too-small warm body put in to get Victor Ortiz a win and move Ortiz along to a pay-per-view main event with Canelo. Instead, Lopez played spoiler, unleashing an attack that broke Ortiz's jaw and forced his foe to quit mid-fight.

The huge win in a fight where Lopez was moving up in weight put him in the driver's seat for his own career. Had he moved back to 140 pounds as he said he wanted to do, he could have been one of the biggest names at junior welterweight, trying to build off the win and establish himself as a force in his division.

But the allure of the big paycheck got to him and up another division he goes to face Canelo.

It's tempting to say that this is a no-risk, huge-reward situation for Lopez. After all, if he loses, it's a fight he certainly is expected to. But the speed with which the boxing world moves could make Lopez go from the darling underdog to the one time upset winner footnote in the span of time it takes the referee to waive the fight off under an Alvarez assault.

Lopez can still win in a loss if he puts up a good fight, however. If he gets steamrolled by Alvarez, it will set him back considerably for all the obvious reasons. But, if he fights like he did in the Ortiz fight, giving as well as he gets and putting on a show for the fans, there will be big fight slots for him on Showtime in the future.

140 pounds has plenty of name boxers for him to fight and make decent money against. But that's only going to happen if he can gut it out and make this a fight despite being 10% heavier than he would normally fight.

Of course, if Lopez wins...

...nevermind, that's not happening.