Steven Luevano will likely defend his featherweight title against Juan Manuel Lopez on January 23 in Puerto Rico. Yuriorkis Gamboa and Bernabe Concepcion will be in the co-feature. (Photo via www.boxnews.com.ua)

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It looks like you can forget about a Juan Manuel Lopez-Celestino Caballero fight for 122-pound supremacy on January 23, as all signs now point to Lopez moving up in weight to challenge featherweight titlist Steven Luevano on the January 23 edition of HBO Boxing After Dark from Puerto Rico.

Recent Top Rank press material listed that as the January 23 main event, with a Yuriorkis Gamboa-Bernabe Concepcion bout as the co-feature, and now Lopez's co-promoter, Ivan Rivera of Puerto Rico Best Boxing, says that Luevano-Lopez is the plan (link in Spanish).

From El Nuevo Dia:

"Everything indicates that it will be Steve Luevano, first because he's also with Top Rank, and it's a much better deal; and second because [Lopez] has talked of going up in weight after his fight with Mtagwa. For a long while, Juanma has had trouble making 122."

I can't say as though it's surprising. This is another instance where Arum and Top Rank don't have to seriously co-promote with anyone, and if Lopez wins, he just beat a good titlist in another division. If Luevano pulls the upset, at least they've got the guy that mucked up some of their plans, and can try to do something with him.

For anyone that thinks Luevano (37-1-1, 15 KO) will be easy for Lopez, I'll throw in a differing opinion. The southpaw may not have much power, but he doesn't make many mistakes, and he's a completely different challenge from Rogers Mtagwa.

That said, there's a decent enough reason to consider Juanma a heavy favorite. He's better at pretty much everything, and if he's able to handle a fellow southpaw, he should do fine. Luevano isn't going to get Lopez to go all cowboy the way Mtagwa did, and at the end of the day fighting a dumb, fan-friendly war with Mtagwa is really the only reason Juanma got into trouble this past Saturday. Luevano's skills are pretty simple, he's not tricky, and he can't win a firefight with Lopez.

The undercard bout is perhaps more interesting to some, with 21-year old Filipino Concepcion (27-3-1, 15 KO) challenging Gamboa (16-0, 14 KO), but frankly I see Gamboa blowing Concepcion out of the water in that one. Concepcion isn't a bad fighter, but he's no phenom. His last was a seven-round DQ loss in an utter stinker against Luevano on August 15. The best thing I can say about this card -- which I like -- is that it almost promises to help us totally avoid Luevano-Concepcion II, which had been discussed.

Actually, Concepcion seems like a guy that might hit his peak and his true career stride with 8-10 losses in five or six years. He's still extremely young, but Gamboa will almost surely be loss number four in January.