Adam Blunose Lopez Reflects on the Last Win
Ahead of their June 11 dustup, there was a large assumption that highly touted Adam “Blunose” Lopez (14-2, 6 KO’s) would enjoy a successful showcase bout against Luis “Louie” Coria (12-3, 7 KO’s). This was because the talented young featherweight had been coming up the ranks the hard way. Even though he only has 16 fights on his professional resume, seven of those bouts were against undefeated fighters.
Beyond this, two of those undefeated fighters were none other than former world featherweight champion Oscar Valdez and the rising super bantamweight contender Stephen “Cool Boy Steph” Fulton (18-0, 8 KO’s). For Coria however, on paper at least, Lopez was by far his stiffest in-ring test. So it’s easy to see why there was a prevalent belief that Lopez would have his way in the squared-circle.
NO GIMME’S HERE!
Once in the ring however, any notion that Lopez was going to have a lopsided victory immediately went out the window. From the very beginning of the match-up, Coria pounced on Lopez and poured a steady river of effective and damaging pressure on Lopez. While Blunose was the more physically talented and capable boxer, Coria’s pressure and unshakable will was a major problem for Lopez.
In hindsight, Blunose has identified what he feels was his biggest blunder when engaging Coria. Given how difficult a night he had in the office, Lopez is one of the first to say that his fight game still needs some significant fine tuning.
“After the fight, I felt like I did very bad, I felt like I had a lot of mistakes and I went into his fight. I fought his fight for a few rounds; first half, first two rounds I definitely fought his fight. And then in the middle rounds, it was back and forth, very close. So, I am my toughest critic and I wasn’t happy with my performance. I think I got hit way more than I’ve ever been hit before.”
“But once when I got back to my room and watched the fight I said, ‘okay, I did better than I thought I did, than I felt I did.’ But it was a tough fight, it was nuts and guts! I had to use my heart, that’s what got me through the fight. Just had to dig deep, it was one of those fights. It was a war! I think I give myself a B- maybe C+, around there, definitely not my sharpest fight.”
ONE STEP BACK, THEN TWO FORWARD
As a result of having such a grueling bout with Coria, along with the previous two match-ups, Lopez thinks that it may be a great idea to take on something of a softer touch in his next few bouts.
“My last three fights have been very tough! I got dropped the last two one’s. Yeah my fight in Orlando against Jean Carlos Rivera I got dropped, Valdez I got dropped. This fight, as we all saw, my face was very swollen so the last three fights were very tough. I think I need a couple stay-busy fights just to get a couple wins in and nothing too crazy!”
“I’m still young, I don’t want to short my career up, I want to have a long career. I definitely got some things to work on, get my defense a little tighter. But I definitely think that fight right there [Luis Coria] is going to open doors for big names. There is a lot of big names in the featherweight division and I think that fight right there will get the fans to want it more and push for it and I think that Top Rank is willing to make these fights happen.”
By: Bakari Simpson
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