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Emanuel Navarrete vs Uriel Lopez Odds and Pick

Dylan Bowker

by Dylan Bowker in Boxing

Updated Jun 19, 2020 · 11:54 AM PDT

Navarrete vs Lopez
Emanuel Navarrete and Uriel Lopez fight in Mexico City, Mexico in a featherweight contest.
  • Navarrete vs Lopez goes Saturday, June 20th at 7:00 PM EST
  • Can Navarrete finish his sixth straight fight via (T)KO or does Lopez pull off the David vs Goliath upset?
  • Check out the odds for this bout, my sweet science analysis, and my fight prediction by scrolling down

Emanuel Navarrete versus Uriel Lopez emanates from Gimnasio TV Azteca in Mexico City, Mexico. Navarrete vs Lopez will broadcast on ESPN. Navarrete is a world champion at super bantamweight but will be making a brief stop at featherweight for this bout.

Conversely, Lopez has a .500 record as a professional pugilist and this is by far the biggest test of his career. This ten-round contest, on paper, might be the biggest mismatch that I’ve ever written about in my coverage for SBD. It’s yet another busy week for Top Rank but they’re going in a different market for this one.

Navarrete vs Lopez Odds

Fighter Odds
Emanuel Navarrete -10000
Uriel Lopez +1600

Odds taken June 18

Emanuel Navarrete had early career experience as a flyweight, has been carving out a path at super bantamweight lately, and will make his first foray to featherweight with this next fight. This one could be a good indicator for Navarrete’s future. Though Emanuel Navarrete is arguably the most active reigning world champion in present-day boxing, his days as a 122 lb fighter seem numbered. This isn’t just fan/ pundit speculation but Navarrete himself has addressed this. A jump to 126 lbs seems to be the targeted goal with a timeline mapped out for 2021.

Navarrete and Lopez’s Resumes

Navarrete is riding a 26-fight winning streak under Queensberry rules. His last outing saw him dispatch Jeo Santisima in the later rounds of their February 2020 fight. This would mark the fifth successful defense of Navarrete’s WBO super bantamweight world championship. The same Jeo Santisima that fought and defeated Uriel Lopez in November 2018. The aforementioned rate of activity for Navarrete was obviously impeded with the global pandemic. The boxing community collectively has to be elated to bring back such a compelling, exemplary fighter to in-ring action again.

Uriel Lopez began his career winless in his first three forays into the ring. Lopez is presently bookending things as he enters this fight riding a three-fight losing streak. This Navarrete and Lopez matchup very much fits the mold of a lot of the main events Top Rank has booked in their post-COVID 19 return.

People in the boxing community have been critical of the lack of parity in these fights which are objectively pretty glaring mismatches. The matchmaking is centered on their key fighters shaking off the rust after lockdown, taking a tune-up fight to stay busy, and seeing how things play out for a more consequential fight later in the year.

Emanuel Navarrete vs Uriel Lopez Tale of the Tape

Navarrete
VS
Lopez
31-1 Record 13-13-1
27 Knockouts 6
5’7 Height N/A
72″ Reach 64″
Isaac Dogboe, Francisco De Vaca, Francisco Horta Significant Wins Antonio Tostado Garcia and Ryo Matsumoto
Orthodox Stance Orthodox

This booking pits an inconsistent club fighter against a dominant world champ with an 87 percent KO rate. This is the kind of stuff that Hollywood executives love to see. A true Rocky story where the everyman boxer finally gets his crack at the formidable world-beater who is still somehow improving.

Unfortunately for Lopez and his supporters, what happens in the ring more often than not fails to coincide with the fairytale endings of the cinematic world. I predict that when Navarrete vs Lopez goes down, the former stops the latter inside of six rounds.

Pick: Emanuel Navarrete (-10000)

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