By Jake Donovan

At the time of their HBO doubleheader being put together, it was clear that the show was sold as a prelude to an eventual clash between undefeated titlists Juan Manuel Lopez and Yuriorkis Gamboa.

In the days leading up to Saturday’s telecast, promoter Bob Arum was adamant in suggesting that such a fight needs time to simmer and marinate, and that we shouldn’t expect such a fight until much later in the year, with some speculating as late as 2011.

But if the results from earlier in the day are any indication, perhaps it’s best to cut straight to the chase and make Lopez-Gamboa a reality before it has a chance to fall apart.

More than 12 hours before the pair of standout featherweights would breeze through separate showcase bouts, junior flyweight Brian Viloria added the latest chapter to a career that has been filled with more ups and downs than a daily elevator log.

The plan for the former US Olympian and two-time alphabet titlist in 2010 was to secure a showdown with undefeated lineal champion Ivan Calderon. All he had to do in order to get there was make a routine title defense in the Philippines.

Famous last words.

To his credit, Viloria was doing his job for the most part. He was up on two of the three cards going into the 12th round of his first title defense against Carlos Tamara. He only needed to stay on his feet for three more minutes to escape with no worse than a split decision draw and proceed with a shot at taking Calderon’s title and undefeated record.

He fell 75 seconds short of making that a reality. Tamara came on like gangbusters in the championship rounds, taking advantage of a rapidly fatiguing Viloria before closing the show late in the 12th and final round to win the fight and reshuffle the junior flyweight deck in a big way.

Viloria barely made it to his dressing room – and with assistance – before collapsing and being rushed to a nearby hospital. He was later declared to be in stable condition, but already being discussed during the healing process was Plan B for Ivan Calderon.

There was no need for late scrambling after Saturday night’s Garden party, where Lopez and Gamboa both took care of business in emphatic fashion. Gamboa dropped Rogers Mtagwa three times en route to a second-round stoppage in the televised co-feature. Lopez had a greater challenge on his hands with Steven Luevano in the main event, but eventually surged ahead to drop and stop him in seven.

For the moment, Lopez’ star is on the rise, while Gamboa remains stuck on cult favorite, but with no real live fanbase of which to speak. It’s tough to make a super fight when neither fighter is a superstar or even anywhere close to it.

Lopez is a star in his native Puerto Rico, but is still in the process of building a strong fanbase elsewhere, particularly New York City.

The next step, according to Top Rank, is to have Lopez appear on the undercard of Miguel Cotto’s next fight, tentatively scheduled for June 12 at Madison Square Garden. Lopez’ lone appearance in the main room came in his fourth pro fight, deep on the undercard of Cotto’s debut in the arena in 2005, beginning a tradition of taking center stage on the eve of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade.

Obviously the long term plan is for Lopez to replace his countryman as such an attraction. A co-feature appearance in his next fight goes a long way towards realizing that goal; Lopez will be exposed to an audience nearly five times the size of the crowds for his last two fights in the Theatre.

What’s not quite as clear for the moment is where Gamboa goes while waiting for a JuanMa showdown to materialize. Arum himself seemed unsure what to do with the incredibly gifted Cuban, who captured Olympic Gold in the 2004 Summer Games when asked earlier in the week about the expected wait time for Lopez-Gamboa to become a reality.

Unless the plan is to attempt to build Gamboa as a draw on his own, allowing this fight to simmer for too long could prove to backfire. All too often in boxing, trying to plan a fight to get to another fight leaves too much room for something to go wrong. Viloria’s upset loss to Tamara earlier in the day is only the latest example.

Whatever luster lingered for a rematch between Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones completely disappeared when Jones suffered a first round knockout at the hands of Danny Green last month in Australia. That the fight was still made hardly means anything; such news was met with far more ridicule than anticipation, especially when it came with the announcement of the show’s promoters having the gall to charge $50 for the seniors tour.

Also flirting with disaster is the super fight that may never get made between boxing’s very best pound for pound fighters Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather. Pacquiao has lined up the dangerous Joshua Clottey in March. Mayweather neither has a set date or an opponent for his next fight, though there are strong indications that he will face Shane Mosley on May 1.

Even if you want to sell both events as a Final Four that hopefully leads to Pacquiao-Mayweather, neither fighter is hardly guaranteed to win their respective fights. Even worse is the idea of Arum further playing with fire in openly discussing the possibility of Pacquiao facing disgraced former welterweight champion Antonio Margarito later this summer, should both win in March (assuming Margarito is able to get relicensed).

For the moment, Lopez and Gamboa appear to be safe at featherweight, with no major risks lying ahead of either fighter, other than each other. Chris John, the long reigning undefeated titlist out of Indonesia, presents a formidable challenge for either foe, but the recent renewed feud between Top Rank (who promotes Lopez and Gamboa) and Golden Boy (the stateside promoter of record for John) limits such matchups to hypothetical discussion for the moment.

Beyond John, not a lot of live talent exists at featherweight. Respectable talent, sure; just not the type of supporting cast that is a high risk to produce a major spoiler at the very top level. Least of all, nobody that will truly define either fighter as the man to beat at featherweight.

Then again, few expected Lopez to endure the fight of his life against Rogers Mtagwa last October. But there he was, barely surviving the championship rounds to escape with a hotly contested decision in one of the year’s best fights.

The only scares in Gamboa’s career to date has been his trips to the canvas, though he’s managed to recover well enough each time to go on to win either by knockout or with plenty of room to spare.

Still, why leave so much to chance when it’s clear that there already exists the best fight to be made at featherweight, a division long overdue for a definitive leader in the years that have passed since the departure of the modern-day Fab Four.

All of the networks love both fighters. The type of fight that will be lined up for both fighters while teasing with the promise of a future head-on meeting hardly figure to be notable enough to arouse any more interest than is already the case. Any fight challenging enough leaves too much to chance.

There’s no reason to push for such a fight to ever headline a pay-per-view telecast. In the era of cutting back and getting more for your money, this is as TV-friendly a fight as you can ask for.

In the wake of both fighters looking brilliant in the first major telecast of 2010, the question beckons – why not strike while the iron is hot?

The road to creating superstars of both Lopez and Gamboa is a long and winding trail, with no such guarantee of ever reaching your destination. Having them fight each other to produce the next genuine featherweight superstar is a much shorter - and far more rewarding - path.

Jake Donovan is the Managing Editor of Boxingscene.com and an award-winning member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Contact Jake at JakeNDaBox@gmail.com.