Emmanuel Rodriguez had a little more trouble than Melvin Lopez making weight Friday for their bantamweight championship match.
Rodriguez was slightly overweight, 118.2 pounds, when he first stepped on the scale for their “Showtime Championship Boxing” main event Saturday night. He stripped naked and moments later met his contractual obligation by weighing in at exactly 118 pounds, the bantamweight limit.
Lopez weighed 117 pounds on his first attempt for their 12-round, 118-pound title fight at MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
Puerto Rico’s Rodriguez, 31, will attempt to win back the IBF bantamweight championship he lost to Naoya Inoue four years ago. Japan’s Inoue (25-0, 22 KOs), who knocked out Rodriguez in the second round of their May 2019 bout in Glasgow, Scotland, relinquished the IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO 118-pound championships to move up four pounds to the 122-pound division.
Rodriguez (21-2, 13 KOs, 1 NC) is the IBF’s number two contender in the bantamweight division. Nicaragua’s Lopez (29-1, 19 KOs) is ranked third by the IBF.
The number one position in the IBF’s rankings is unoccupied.
The official weights for the five fights Showtime will stream and then televise before Rodriguez opposes Lopez are listed below.
Showtime
9 p.m. EDT; 6 p.m. PDT
Gary Antuanne Russell (16-0, 16 KOs), Capitol Heights, Maryland, 138.4 pounds vs. Kent Cruz (16-0-3, 10 KOs), St. Louis, 142.6 pounds, 10 rounds, junior welterweights. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Cruz came in 2.6 pounds over the contracted limit of 140 pounds. He was given one hour to lose the required weight.)
Travon Marshall (8-0, 7 KOs), Capitol Heights, Maryland, 146.8 pounds vs. Gabriel Maestre (5-0-1, 4 KOs), Barcelona, Venezuela, 146.6 pounds, 10 rounds, welterweights.
Showtime Sports’ YouTube channel
6:30 p.m. EDT; 3:30 p.m. PDT
Michael Angeletti (8-0, 7 KOs), Spring, Texas, 117.8 pounds vs. Jonathan Lopez (8-0-2, 4 KOs), Humacao, Puerto Rico, 118 pounds, 8 rounds, bantamweights.
Jose Benavidez Jr. (27-2-1, 18 KOs), Phoenix, 158.6 pounds vs. Sladan Janjanin (36-15, 26 KOs), Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 160.6 pounds, 10 rounds, middleweights.
Damien Vazquez (16-3-1, 9 KOs), Las Vegas, 120 pounds vs. Jeronil Borres (12-8-2, 6 KOs), Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines, 121.6 pounds, 8 rounds, junior featherweights.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.