What will it take to make Juan Manuel Lopez a bigger star in America?

[:::PSL:::]

Caballero says Lopez does not carry Puerto Rican warrior spirit

[J_Undisputed]

Gamboa losing or dropping off the map.

I haven't taken to Lopez. The enthusiasm is the same as it was for me and Cotto. The search for the next Puerto Rican superstar meant, find the next guy with potential and hype him up. Lopez has a decent amount of technical skill. The problem for him thus far is that everyones been eyeballing Gamboa because of talent.
So far we've witnessed Gamboa get dropped once of twice and get up and tough it out and eventually impose his will. It would appear that Lopez is doing the same thing, but you can tell when he gets clipped.. He'd rather be somewhere else. When they headlined the same card and they asked both about a fight in the post fight interview. Gamboa said he wanted it... Lopez wanted someone .. anyone to defer to. Even after the Marquez fight, Lopez at first was like.. "well .. uhhh.. we might um have plans... and I uh...." People took that as a loosely translated "Are you nuts, this guy almost knocked me out..." The fight itself says a lot. Marquez had just been through 3 wars, injured his shoulder and for a good part of the fight was a one trick pony deliberately taking shots to create openings for the left hook... It's kind of hard to boost Juanma's image off of that victory.

Lopez is still a technically skilled guy. I wouldn't call him chinny as its been suggested. But there are a lot of holes in his game. What he lacks in talent, charisma, grasp of the English language (as been suggested also), hes not making up for with anything spectacular. Gamboa can't speak a word of either, but has managed to get a lot of attention, even if his last fight wasn't as exciting as people are used to seeing... because they have the idea if he wanted to turn it up, he could. People don't get that impression with Lopez because many of the times where he's been challenged, tested, or had to go into the trenches willing (not being dragged there), he's seemed rather tentative. Just my opinion of course, I could be wrong.

[Julius Rain]

Work on his defense and box more. I think in a few years Juanma could be p4p King. He has to keep taking tough fights and go up in weight if he can.

[milmascaras1]

juanma lopez has the boxing world in his hands right now, if he wants it bad enough. i mean, the guy is tall, young, charismatic, humble, well spoken and above all, he's undefeated and has power in both hands. even though i had earlier picked caballero as the best featherweight in the world with juanma second, if these two were ever to fight it would be a tossup. i would give juanma a great chance of ko'ing caballero. i hope juanma does go far and hope he becomes one of boxings superstars!