Yea I hate Bob Arum. That's why i prefer Golden Boy I mean they are putting their cash cow in the ring with Floyd Mayweather when they should be protecting him and waiting until Mayweather is older. They are making some good fights and all Bob Arum does is put a bum vs. a bum or a good fighter vs. a bum and then sell it to the public as one of the greatest fights of the year.
Had Lopez and Gamboa fought, it would have been huge. I still think Gamboa would have knocked Lopez out inside of 3 rounds. Lopez has no head movement and Gamboa has a lot of speed and power. Lopez is slow.
Still, Bob Arum should have made the fight. It was the best fight at Featherweight.
Arum was so drunk with success in 2009-2010 with Manny Pacquiao that he was craving for more big fights to keep his cash register ringing for years to come. But he perhaps concluded that a super bout between a Puerto Rican (Juan Ma Lopez ) and a Cuban ( Yuriorkis Gamboa ) would not draw that much live paying crowd and PPV customers seeing that Puerto Rican and Cuban boxing fans in the USA were not as numerous as their Mexican and Filipino counterparts and were largely concentrated in the East Coast, especially in New York. Of course, that's a gross underestimation of the two fighters' ability to draw in the bigger American boxing fans as he would later found out when both Juan Ma and Gamboa separately became household names in the continent.
Arum's reputation as an astute fight promoter really took a hit for his failure to pit these two fighters at their popularity peaks and hottest streaks which are now a thing of the past what with Gamboa going more and more the way of another fallen could have been superstar Hector Macho Camacho and Lopez, what could I say, most likely headed for retirement-ville.
I don't know why people are still obsessed over the fact this fight wasn't made. We may have missed out on that fight, but at least we got to enjoy Salido-Lopez I, II which probably turned out to be better/more competitive fights than Gamboa-Lopez would have been. I can understand why people wanted to see it at the time as they were both undefeated champs who were seen as having superstar potential, but Lopez didn't live up to expectations and Gamboa's career has lost momentum during the past few years as he pulled out of a fight with rios, took time off to get out of his contract with Arum and sign with crappy tmt promotions, and got caught up in a steroids scandal. And he hasn't looked all that impressive since his return. Meanwhile, I think Mikey has super star potential written all over him. He's relatively young and has wins over Salido and Lopez, and there are plans for him to challenge Rocky Martinez for another title.
yeah i agree
to be fair though, Arum was just doing what a promoter is supposed to, i understand why he didnt fight these two, but he overplayed his hand, thats all
but the funny thing is, he didnt learn from his mistakes, and he lost the Mayweather/Pac fight as well
Arum's getting old. his son recently as well....Arum is on the way out
in the big picture, Lopez vs Gamboa isnt that *** of a deal
It seemed more plausible at the time than Pacquiao-Mayweather and was looking to be even more exciting.I was one of those really looking forward to that fight and held on to the possibility even after Juanma's first loss to Salido.
Now I just laugh at how Arum overplayed his hand and failed to get a return on his investment.
This has always annoyed me, and I need to address it.
That fight would've been HUGE in 2009 or 2010. HUGE...but what did Arum do?
Oh yeah, he wanted to let it "Marinate"...and then "Marinate" some more, and then "Marinat..." BOOM, JuanMa gets crushed by Salido.
One of the biggest fights that could've been made at the time goes down the drain, all thanks to Arum.
I realize at this point Gamboa probably would've stopped Lopez, but Lopez has always been a hard hitting guy and Gamboa is wreckless w/ a weak chin as well.
Now, in the last two years Lopez has been knocked out in half of his fights, and Gamboa has looked boring/uninteresting in most of his performances, despite still winning.
If they had fought when they SHOULD HAVE, it would've been a huge and exciting fight. Too bad ARUM had to be greedy and stupid about it.
Sorry, I'm done venting but I had to get it out.
