Always wondered why these two never faced off considering they fought similar opponents as Matthew Saad Muhammad, Victor Galindez, Michael Spinks. I think this would have been another exciting LHW fight with these two matched up. How would this fight have gone?
The winner would be the fans,,,of course all boxing fans in the 70's + 80's were winners. Lean towards Marvin
There were so many great fights during that era of light heavies but this one may have been the best. It is kind of odd that they never fought because all those guys were willing to fight the other guys.
Yaqui early overcome by Marvin later … but down the stretch if he’s still there I could see Lopez roaring back to win with the strong finish. Yaqui was a very left-hand oriented fighter with his hook and jab. He used the right but it wasn’t a real power punch, and I think that hurts him against southpaw Johnson. Marvin was all pressure, all the time, and balls-out. Nothing finesse about his game. In your face, bombs away. So I’m going with Marvin on a TKO (possibly cuts) somewhere around 9 or 10. But if Alvaro survives into 11 or 12, he could come back to claim it as Marvin to me was never a great stamina guy … owing to his ‘don’t save it for later’ style.
As close to a 50/50 as it gets, but I’d edge towards Johnson, as Lopez’s best weapon was the jab, and the pressure combined with being a southpaw may take that away from Lopez, although Lopez could fight as well, I believe Johnson is advantaged there.
They occupied my favorite point in history for one weight class as far as being stacked (and ‘only’ two champs until Michael Spinks unified). In an overlapping time, with many of these full force at the exact same time, we had (in no certain order): Matthew Saad Muhammad Marvin Johnson Eddie Mustafa Muhammad James Scott Victor Galindez Michael Spinks (he’s coming into the picture as some of the others began to fade but definitely overlapped) Dwight Muhammad Qawi Mike Rossman Yaqui Lopez John Conteh Then there’s a tier with the likes of: Marvin Camel, Jerry Martin, Eddie and Johnny Davis, Mustafa Wassaja, Vonzell Johnson, Richie Kates, Jesse Burnett, Bobby Cassidy, Mate Parlov and others (some of whom are on the early end of this era, some coming on toward the end of it). That’s absolutely ridiculous.
The question here is whether Yaqui hits hard enough to keep Johnson off him. Lopez made Saad’s head bounce around like a piňata in round 8 of their classic war but couldn’t put him down - if he threw a similar volley (and he would probably need to) would Johnson stand up to it? Despite Johnson being southpaw, he wasn’t a tricky fighter to locate but to keep him honest you need enough power and I’m just not sure Yaqui has it. Like others have said, if Yaqui can survive the onslaught then he could take this, but I think I lean towards Johnson by a TKO in another classic from a great light heavyweight era.
