Their marketable battle, sought by Lopez and Garcia since they were lightweights in their early 20s, makes more sense than ever now that they hold 147-pound championships. It shouldn’t be a difficult fight to put together, considering they’re both aligned with DAZN and their managerial teams — headed by Guadalupe Valencia (Garcia) and Mike Borao and Keith Connolly (Lopez) — have a good working relationship.

It helps, too, that Garcia and Lopez know how to sell a fight. Lopez beat Rolando “Rolly” Romero for his WBA belt August 22 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, where Garcia beat Benn.

Romero upset Garcia (26-2, 21 KOs) to win a version of the WBA title in a Ring main event in May 2025 in New York. That makes opposing Lopez (23-2, 13 KOs) the next best thing to a rematch for Garcia.

Lopez, while a small welterweight, is considerably better than Benn and undoubtedly more deserving of facing Garcia. And fans want to see them fight.

There is nothing not to like about Garcia-Lopez. It just isn’t the fight for Garcia that should be made next.

A Garcia-Devin Haney rematch might never be bigger now. Garcia has rebuilt his reputation after his surprising defeat to Romero 15 months ago. As good as he looked in back-to-back victories over Mario Barrios (29-3-2, 18 KOs) and Benn (25-2, 14 KOs), his loss to Romero (17-3, 13 KOs) should serve as an invaluable lesson regarding greed and underestimating opponents.

Those urging Garcia to fight Lopez next insist that it would only make a rematch with Haney bigger, as if “The Takeover” isn’t more than capable of winning. The former unified lightweight champion did, after all, just handily defeat the same man who beat Garcia and ruined the Haney rematch last year.

Haney sat ringside to watch the demolition of Benn, but Garcia isn’t sure he truly wants to fight him again.

“There definitely is a world that [the Haney rematch] happens,” Garcia told The Ring last week. “It looks good, but you never know with boxing. The landscape of boxing changes 24/7 pretty much, from fight to fight. And I don’t know. There’s a lotta things that Devin got to work out and a lotta things that he needs to come to peace with, because it doesn’t seem like they wanna fight me. I'm a be real with you … I did a number on him, I really did. I really hurt them mentally, physically, even spiritually.

“I have hurt them very bad, so I doubt they want this work again, because it’ll be even worse the second time around. Yeah, it’ll be disgusting. People will have to turn away. Some tears, some people might have napkins in the arena to wipe their tears after seeing [it]. Even if they didn’t like me or didn’t even like Devin, they might cry for him because of the beating. So we’ll see.”

What we’ve seen in recent months is that Haney needs to fight Garcia again as much as the latter must demonstrate that those three knockdowns of his rival weren’t the byproduct of using ostarine, the banned substance for which he tested positive following his majority-decision win in April 2024 at Barclays Center in New York.

Haney (33-0, 15 KOs) tried hard to make fights against Shakur Stevenson and Keyshawn Davis, neither of which materialized. He could travel to Australia again for a unification clash with IBF champ Liam Paro, yet that isn’t the kind of high-profile fight the former undisputed lightweight champ craves.

Haney hasn’t fought in almost 10 months, either, which eliminated the momentum he had after he beat Brian Norman to win the WBO title November 22 on another Ring card in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His convincing victory made people forget how tentative he was in cautiously outpointing Jose Ramirez in his return from a damaging fight against Garcia.

Garcia and Haney have other options. We shouldn’t consider Garcia rematching with Gervonta Davis realistic because the latter won’t move up from lightweight to welterweight and doesn’t possess the leverage anymore to force the bout at a lower weight.

If you disregard Davis-Garcia II, there isn’t a more important or commercially viable event available to Haney and Garcia than their rematch. If recent history should’ve taught them anything, it’s that they can’t take for granted that it’ll always be as big as they’ve managed to make it again.

■ Jai Opetaia should abandon his pursuit of becoming undisputed cruiserweight champion based on how the IBF and WBC have dealt with him the past six months. His fight against David Benavidez will determine boxing’s best fighter in the 200-pound division no matter which titles are at stake when they enter the ring. They don’t need validation from the IBF, WBA, WBC or WBO, and Opetaia could save himself hundreds of thousands of dollars in sanctioning fees by boxing Benavidez for just his Ring and Zuffa titles. If they don’t want those titles at stake, either, so be it, as long as they fight.

■ If it was of utmost importance that Michal Cieslak be treated fairly, why didn’t the WBC name him the mandatory challenger for Noel Mikaelian’s cruiserweight championship late in May, and not Benavidez? The Mexico City-based sanctioning organization instead waited until Monday to announce it stripped Mikaelian and elevated Cieslak from interim champ, when we well know that decision was made before he entered the ring to box Opetaia on Saturday night. That was rather convenient for the WBC, which avoided any backlash on site before it took six figures apiece from the purses of Garcia and Benn in the main event.

■ Zuffa Boxing’s need to secure subscribers for Paramount+ shouldn’t be discounted when weighing whether the fledgling promotional company would move forward with a Stevenson-Manny Pacquiao fight. Hopefully, however, Zuffa will do better than a 47-year-old opponent, the Filipino legend’s star power notwithstanding, when it debuts one of the best fighters, pound-for-pound, in boxing on its platform. As well as a surprisingly competitive Pacquiao performed against Barrios almost 14 months ago, a fight with an outcome as predictable as Stevenson versus Pacquiao should be avoided after Garcia knocked out Benn even earlier than anticipated in what amounted to a glorified mismatch.

■ If Terence Crawford changes his mind about retirement, it won’t be because he can’t stand Garcia. Crawford would surely enjoy beating Garcia, but that wouldn’t be the type of win he would consider worthwhile if he were to drag himself back into another grueling training camp. Crawford, who will turn 39 on September 28, would make eight figures no matter who he fought in a comeback bout, thus the financial incentive wouldn’t be enough for facing Garcia in what would be dismissed as a relatively easy, pointless fight for him.