Team Teofimo Lopez dominates 2020 BWAA awards

Sweeps fighter, trainer, manager of year

Teofimo Lopez and his team dominated the 2020 Boxing Writers Association of America awards, which were announced on Friday.

The 23-year-old Lopez (16-0, 12 KOs) was voted as the Sugar Ray Robinson fighter of the year thanks to his unanimous decision upset of Vasiliy Lomachenko, viewed my many as the pound-for-pound No. 1 fighter in the world at the time, to unify lightweight world titles on Oct. 17 in Las Vegas.

Lopez is the first American to win the award since Floyd Mayweather in 2015. The nominees Lopez beat were Canelo Alvarez, Gervonta Davis, Tyson Fury, Errol Spence Jr. and Joe Smith Jr.

“I’m very appreciative of this,” Lopez said. “It’s been a long journey and this is just the beginning. What I can say is this is a true big win for us. It’s surreal. Sometimes I still think this is a dream for us, but we turned that dream into reality.

“Every fighter that I look down on the list of past BWAA fighter of the year award winners are in the Hall of Fame, or going into the Hall of Fame. Now I’m a part of that group and that history. It’s something no one can take away from me. There is so much more that we can do.”

Team Lopez won the BWAA triple crown. In addition to Lopez claiming fighter of the year honors, Teofimo Lopez Sr., Lopez’s father, won the Eddie Futch trainer of the year award and manager David McWater of Split-T Management won the Cus D’Amato manager of the year award.

Lopez Sr. beat nominees Robert Garcia, Sugar Hill Steward, Derrick James and Eddy Reynoso. McWater’s competition was Keith Connolly, Peter Kahn, Rick Mirigian and Reynoso.

It’s the third time in the past four years that one team won fighter, trainer and manager of the year.

“I never expected this,” Lopez Sr. said. “This is a tribute to all of the hard work that we put in. I was thinking about my son. I wasn’t thinking about any awards, so to get this from the BWAA makes me a part of history and I’ll be in the boxing books forever. It’s a great honor and I don’t plan on letting anyone down.”

Said McWater, “Getting this award is pretty exciting and very vindicating. It involved a lot of hard work. It’s a tribute to our whole company at Split-T. Everyone at Split-T has so much to be grateful about for Teofimo and his father. Their awards couldn’t be more deserving.”

The Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight of the year award went to the epic slugfest between junior welterweights Jose Zepeda and Ivan Baranchyk, which was the obvious selection.

On Oct. 3 in Las Vegas in the main event of a Top Rank card, Zepeda stopped former world titlist Baranchyk – who is also managed by McWater – in the fifth round of a shocking battle.

“This is very exciting, because I know now that this will be part of boxing history,” Zepeda said. “I’m glad that I was able to be in a fight like that, and I’m happy for me and Ivan, because both of us gave up everything in there. It’s why we’re part of boxing, because we gave it our all. It’s double the pleasure, because it’s fight of the year and I won. I think a lot of good things can happen for me this year because of that fight. I know fans want to see that fight again. I think our second fight could be even better than our first fight.”

Zepeda and Baranchyk combined for eight knockdowns. Both men were dropped four times apiece and there were knockdowns in every round before Zepeda flattened Baranchyk with a highlight-reel knockout.

“This is great,” Baranchyk said. “I saw the fight one time with my trainer, that was it. I went back over the fight to fix my mistakes to be ready for the rematch. I would like to fight Jose again.”

The other fight of the year nominees were Gervonta Davis-Leo Santa Cruz, Carlos Gongora-Ali Akhmedov, Juan Francisco Estrada-Carlos Cuadras II, Masayoshi Nakatani-Felix Verdejo and Alexander Povetkin-Dillian Whyte.

The 2020 John McCain-Bill Crawford courage award goes to the Magomed Abdusalamov family, which has been caring for the former heavyweight after he suffered severe brain injuries during his fight with Mike Perez on Nov. 2, 2013 at the Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Mark Breland, Prichard Colon, Derrick James and Jose Santa Cruz were the other nominees.

The award winners will be honored at the 2021 BWAA annual banquet on a date to be determined. Also at the banquet the 2019 winners will be honored because the 2020 dinner was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.