Ireland’s Michael Conlan takes a second stab at a world title in his native Belfast on May 27, going to-to-toe with featherweight world champion, Luis Alberto Lopez. Conlan (18-1, 9 KOs) has rebuilt since his lone career defeat against Leigh Wood last year to find himself in title contention again.
Conlan’s brother and manager, Jamie Conlan spoke exclusively to ProBox TV News to discuss the rebuild as he prepares his fighter to become world champion.
“This is the right time for him.” Said Conlan. “He learnt a lot from the Leigh Wood fight. Learnt a lot about pace, learnt a lot regarding timing. When to go, when not to go. Things you don’t really understand until you are in that kind of fight. A fight that was fought at a frantic pace, a fight fight with so much hostility. So much aggression, so much ego! A lot of thing got put in place there.
Nonetheless Michael Conlan finds him on the cusp of his dreams come May 27 against Lopez, who comes off a victory over Josh Warrington Leeds, where he won the world title.
“He’s rebuilt against Miguel Marriaga and Karim Guerfi, so I think this is the perfect time to fight Luis Alberto Lopez.” The older brother added. “He presents a completely different task at hand. I think if you look at the two fighters of Luis Alberto Lopez and Leigh Wood, this is a ten-times harder fight. Not saying he’s a ten-times better fighter, I’m just saying it’s a harder fight because there were different ways to beat Leigh. There is only one or two, maybe three ways to beat Luis.
“He’s unpredictable, he fights with no rhythm. He seems like he is heavy-handed, he’s explosive and can fight, fight inside and can fight on the outside. He’s got a great chin! He is a lot harder to beat than Leigh Wood. Michael needed to be in that position like he was against Leigh Wood, he needed to come back from that to understand himself as a fighter. You will see him come back ten-times stronger against Luis Alberto Lopez.”
