Celestino Caballero and Juan Manuel Lopez in Negotiations

For the last six months, there has been a war of words between unified super bantamweight champion Celestino Caballero and hotshot titlist Juan Manuel Lopez.  Caballero has continuously called out Lopez, and Lopez's camp has gone back and forth on slighting him and saying he wants to make a fight.  Caballero already told the press he was going to storm this weekend's Lopez fight and try to call him out publicly, a la Shane Mosley.   Evidently, this prospect was enough for Bob Arum to finally get serious and invite Caballero's people to the negotiating table. 

According to Primera Hora (link in Spanish), Lopez and Caballero will meet this weekend to try hammering out a deal for the two to face off early next year.  Caballero will be sitting front and center at the fight.  The tenor of this one sounds serious enough that hopefully the verbal battles have ended until the fight actually gets signed.  Showtime has already expressed great interest in this fight, so if both fighters want it, then it's probably a lock to get made.  Caballero isn't making any money fighting mandatories in off-TV cards in Panama and Mexico, and Lopez can't be making all that much headlining small pay-per-views that probably don't generate much more than a million dollars in total revenue.  I suspect Showtime will be willing to match that amount, without even counting whatever they get for a live gate, and if HBO throws its hat into the ring, the dollar value of this fight could approach that of the third Vasquez-Marquez fight (where each fighter received a million dollar purse). 

With Rafael Marquez and Israel Vasquez (as of this weekend) both officially moved up to featherweight, Caballero vs. Lopez is THE premier matchup left in the weight class.  Not only would it create a three-belt unified champ, but it would create a new lineage that has been vacated by Vasquez moving up.  Furthermore, with Caballero already in the Ring Magazine pound for pound top 10, and Lopez likely knocking on the door, the winner would move pretty high up that list.  A convincing victory by either one could create a legitimate star in the smaller weight classes.

As for the fight itself, it could play out in a number of ways.  Lopez has shown incredible stamina, workrate and accuracy in the past, but he's generally been picking on smaller fighters.  If Caballero is on the top of his game, as he was against Steve Molitor, Daniel Ponce de Leon and Somsak Sithchatchawal, he can control the ring from the outside, popping out jabs and combinations from a distance where Lopez can't even reach him.  On the other hand, Caballero has also tended to lose his focus at times, allowing guys to get on the inside and punish him to his scrawny body, as was the case with Jeffrey Mathebula and Eduardo Escobedo.  Based on what I've seen of the two of them, I'd have to favor Lopez in this one, but I've always maintained that Caballero is the toughest fight available for him based on styles - tougher than Vasquez, tougher than Marquez, tougher than Gamboa.  The fight could be a classic or it could be a stinker, but either way, I'll be intrigued to see how it plays out.