Lopez 'still got it' as he outpoints Taylor for junior welterweight title
Former lightweight champion sharp in winning lineal championship in a 2nd division; Zayas shines in co-feature
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After former unified lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez got knocked down and struggled to a split decision win over fringe contender Sandor Martin in their junior welterweight bout in December, a dejected Lopez questioned himself and his boxing future.
“Do I still got it,” he asked nobody in particular as he leaned against the ropes after the bout in a scene captured by ESPN’s cameras.
Six months later the resounding answer is he sure as hell does.
In a superb performance, one of the best of his career, Lopez took apart the naturally bigger Josh Taylor to win a unanimous decision and the lineal/WBO junior welterweight world championship in the main event of the Top Rank Boxing on ESPN card Saturday night at The Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Judge Benoit Roussel scored it 117-111 but judges Joseph Pasquale and Steve Gray shockingly had the apparent rout 115-113. Fight Freaks Unite scored the fight 118-110 for Lopez.
Pasquale and Gray both gave Lopez the 12th round but had they scored it for Taylor it would have resulted in the fight being a majority draw with Taylor retaining the title in the mandatory bout and igniting a massive controversy — one even a bigger than from 16 months ago when in Taylor’s last fight he was on the winning end of a tremendously controversial split decision over Jack Catterall in defense of the undisputed crown.
Since then, Taylor, who had unified all four titles to become the undisputed champion in 2021, vacated or was stripped of three sanctioning body belts because he was planning on a rematch with Catterall rather than making other mandatory bouts. But the Catterall sequel was postponed multiple times and the WBO finally ordered him to fight Lopez in one of the more intriguing fights of the year on paper, and Taylor didn’t want to give up his remaining belt.
According to Top Rank, the fight drew a sellout crowd of 5,151 for an all-time record boxing gate for the arena of about $850,000, which broke the mark previously held by Vasiliy Lomachenko’s win over Jose Pedraza in their lightweight unification fight in 2018.
Those fans and the national television audience saw a supreme performance from Lopez, who scored a big victory to become a two-division champion in the same ring where he lost his unified lightweight belts to George Kambosos Jr. in November 2021 before moving up to 140 pounds.
Many questioned Lopez’s chances to compete with the best in the division after two ho-hum performances to go along with the constant tumult of his life outside the ring. But he was focused, disciplined and in tremendous condition as he rose to the occasion against Taylor.
“I’m just so thankful right now,” Lopez said. “It’s been a long time coming. We just beat the No. 1-ranked guy, No. 1 champion, the lineal world champion, Josh Taylor. The former undisputed world champion.
“Josh Taylor is a tough dude, man. I can see why he beat so many fighters. But you’ve got to counter the counter puncher. You’ve got to outsmart the man and get in there and I did that. I think I did enough. This is what it is all about.”
Taylor, a southpaw, who was in his first fight with trainer Joe McNally after paring ways with Ben Davison last fall, got off to a good start by landing his vaunted left hand and winning exchanges in the first round.
But Lopez quickly adjusted and began peppering Taylor with counter left hooks. He also mixed in right uppercuts and overall seemed to have more snap on his crisper and far more plentiful punches.
According to CompuBox, Lopez landed 158 of 517 punches (31 percent) and Taylor landed 82 of 341 (24 percent). Lopez outlanded Taylor in every round after the second and held him to single-digit connects in every round after the second.
Lopez (19-1, 13 KOs), 25, a Brooklyn, New York, native fighting out of Las Vegas, had a strong fifth round, landing an uppercut that sent Taylor into the ropes and later a clean right hand as Taylor came to him.
In the sixth round, the crowd broke into chants of “Teo! Teo!” which seemed to lift Lopez. While Taylor’s body language was poor, Lopez looked very confident when he buzzed Taylor with a shot in the seventh round and landed a sharp right hand during an exchange at the bell and began high-stepping.
In the eighth round, the showman came out again as Lopez began wiggling his hips as he toyed with Taylor, whom he cracked with a lunging left hand late in the round and then a right that rocked his head back.
Taylor (19-1, 13 KOs), 32, of Scotland, simply looked lost and had no answers for Lopez’s quick right hands, one of which sent him into the ropes in the final seconds of the ninth round.
There was no urgency from Taylor’s corner in the later rounds and Lopez did not sit on his apparent lead. He continued to go hard at Taylor and knocked him off balance with a left in the 12th round.
He continued to go for a knockout, landing a three-punch combination culminating with a body shot with a minute left and then poured it on in the final seconds, including landing two clean right hands.
‘You’ve got to outsmart the man and get in there and I did that,’ — Lopez
Leading up to the fight, the emotional Lopez said he literally wanted to kill Taylor in the ring, which rubbed many the wrong way. There was such hard feelings that Top Rank kept the fighters at different hotels and scrapped face offs at the fight-week news conference and weigh-in. But Lopez apologized to Taylor in the ring after the fight and they hugged and kissed each other on the cheek.
“I do want to say one thing. I think let my emotions get the best of me,” Lopez said to Taylor. “I do not want to take your life. I want to you to go back to your family, my man, and I apologize as a man.”
Taylor accepted. “It’s all fun and games,” he said. “I never took it seriously.” Then he gave Lopez credit for the victory.
“No excuses. It wasn’t my best. The better man won on the night, so I’ve got no excuses,” Taylor said. “I fought to the best of my ability. He was better on the night. It is what it is. Congratulations to Teofimo.
“I thought it was a close fight. I’d love to do it again. I definitely know I’m better than that, and I know I can beat him still, so I’d love to do it again. But he’s the champ, so the ball’s in his court.”
Taylor also declined to use his long layoff as an excuse.
“The layoff had nothing to do with it. I’ve got no excuses,” he said. “He was the better man tonight. I think probably most likely be moving up to welterweight now. But, there’s no excuses. He was the better man tonight.”
While Taylor is probably headed to 147 pounds, Lopez’s next move in the ring is unclear. He could face former unified titlist and Top Rank stablemate Jose Ramirez, who was ringside. Perhaps he will face undisputed lightweight champion Devin Haney if he elects to remain with Top Rank and move up.
Lopez was not ready to discuss his boxing future because he is involved in divorce proceedings and a bitter custody fight for his young son Liam.
“My next battle is actually in court for my son,” Lopez said. “That’s my next battle. I’m not really focused on who I’m going to fight next.”
Whoever Lopez faces next, that opponent will meet a man much more confident than he was six months ago after struggling against Martin.
“I questioned myself for a good reason,” Lopez said. “You guys don’t understand. I’ve always been my worst critic. And you guys got a little glimpse of it. But I’ve just got to ask you one thing and one thing only: Do I still got it?”
The answer is a resounding yes.
Zayas routs Cruz
In the co-feature, rising Puerto Rican junior middleweight prospect Xander Zayas easily outpointed Ronald Cruz, dishing out a beating on the eve of the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York.
Zayas won 80-71 on all three scorecards before a large continent of Puerto Rican fans against a tough-as-nails Cruz, who absorbed a lot of punishment to the head and body.
Zayas was also awarded the second annual Miguel Cotto Award, which Top Rank and Madison Square Garden created to celebrate the career of the Hall of Fame four-division champion, who had many of his biggest fights in New York during Puerto Rican Day Parade weekend.
“I’m very happy to have fought during Puerto Rican Day Parade weekend,” Zayas said. “He was a tough guy. I was hitting him with everything. He didn’t want to go down. He was here to fight. He was motivated. He was tough. But we passed with flying colors. Unanimous decision and we made the adjustments we needed to do.”
Zayas got off to a hot start. He dropped Cruz to his rear with a clean right hand 30 seconds into the fight, dominated the round and rocked Cruz with a left hook in the closing seconds.
It was more of the same in the second round as Zayas rocked Cruz with an uppercut-left hook combination and later bloodied his nose.
Zayas put his punches together throughout the fight but Cruz was tough and took a lot of shots, including a quick uppercut-right hand combination that landed cleanly in the seventh round.
Zayas (16-0, 10 KOs), 20, of Sunrise, Florida, kept the pressure on in the eighth round and referee Steve Willis looked at Cruz closely, but Zayas could not get the stoppage.
Cruz (18-3-1, 12 KOs), 31, of Los Angeles, dropped to 0-2-1 in his past two fights but has never been stopped.
The bout was originally scheduled for the April 1 co-feature to the Robeisy Ramirez-Isaac Dogboe vacant featherweight title bout but Zayas suffered an injury and the fight was postponed.
Conceicao-Polanco no decision
In one of the preliminary bouts, junior lightweight contender Robson Conceicao (17-2, 8 KOs), 34, a 2106 Olympic gold medalist from Brazil, and Nicolas Polanco (20-4-1, 11 KOs), 33, of the Dominican Republic, fought to a second-round no decision in a fight that ended prematurely because Polanco, who entered on a three-fight losing streak, was unable to continue following a bad accidental head but in the second round. Both of Conceicao’s losses were decisions in world title fights to Oscar Valdez in 2021 and Shakur Stevenson this past September.
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Photos: Mikey Williams/Top Rank
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It’s easy for me to say as a casual observer, but around the 10th round I feel like Lopez took his foot of the gas just a little bit and and I was thinking “oh don’t do that, this is boxing bro, you don’t know what the judges are thinking, keep pressing for the ko”. Turns out he barely won on the score cards! Damn.
That’s absolutely true. Lopez is a Top Rank fighter and I’ve noticed a definite bias from ESPN when reporting on TR fighters and other top fighters from other promoters. There was a major fight not all that long ago (cannot recall the fighter) but they were with another promoter and there were no results at all on the fight on ESPN.