By Mark Vester
The super bantamweight bout between champions Juan Manuel Lopez and Celestino Caballero is coming together. Juanma defends his WBO title against Rogers Mtagwa on October 10. After that he plans to return on January 23 in Puerto Rico. HBO is pushing for Juanma to unify with WBA/IBF champion Caballero. The two have been trading insults for months in the press.
Lopez’s co-promoter, Ivan Rivera, president of Puerto Rico Best Boxing, said the proposed fight would be televised by HBO.
We already have the date of January 23 in Puerto Rico. There is a 90% possibility that it will happen. It would be a unification bout on HBO. The second time that Juanma is on HBO,” Rivera said to Primera Hora. “It is the fight that Caballero wants, Juanma wants and the public wants and also HBO wants. But, we still have to sit down to discuss the economics but there shouldn’t be any problems.”
Juanma wants to pay Caballero back for all of his trashing talking over the last few months. He says Caballero will be his final fight at 126-pounds.
"Caballero dreams of being like me. I am going to fight him because he offended me and upon offending me, he offended Puerto Rico, and there are many Puerto Ricans who are not comfortable with him,” Lopez said. “After we knock Caballero out, there will be nothing more at 122. At 126 there are more options.”
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