By Aragon Garcia: Unbeaten Teofimo Lopez traveled to Mexico on Thursday to meet with World Boxing Council president Mauricio Sulaiman to ask him to be moved from #5 to #1 in the WBC’s rankings in order to get a title shot at the WBC lightweight title should champion Mikey Garcia vacate the title in the near future.
Lopez’s father Teofimo Sr. accompanied him on Thursday to meet with WBC president Sulaiman.
Luke Campbell (19-2, 15 KOs) is the current mandatory for the WBC lightweight belt, and he’s promoted by the powerful Matchroom Sport. If Mikey Garcia doesn’t vacate his WBC title, then Campbell would in theory be the next title defense for him, if the WBC orders him to make the fight. Should the WBC move Campbell, 31, out of the way to put Lopez in his place, it’ll cause a lot of upset with Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn. However, the WBC can always do the same move that they’re doing with mandatory challenger to the WBC heavyweight title Dominic Breazeale by having him fight Dillian Whyte for the interim WBC title. Breazeale is already the mandatory to WBC champion Deontay Wilder, but now he’s been ordered to fight Whyte or the interim belt. Lopez would be a very bad style match-up for the southpaw Campbell, who has thrived at being bigger than his opponents. Against the 5’8″ Lopez, Campbell would only have an inch height an advantage, and he’d have to find a different way of winning the fight rather than counting on doing it with his size.
If the WBC did the same move with Campbell facing Lopez for the interim WBC lightweight title, it would make both fighters happy. Campbell would have the chance to fight a very good fighter in Lopez to prove himself that he deserves to fight for the WBC title. Lopez would have the chance to earn the #1 spot in the WBC’s rankings. The best thing Sulaiman can do to make Lopez and Campbell happy is to order them to fight for the interim WBC title. Those two fighters can’t afford to wait for Mikey to finish licking his wounds from his upcoming March 16 fight against Spence. Mikey has a good chance of winning that fight, but he’s going to be likely recovering from the battle for four to five months. Lopez and Campbell can’t just be waiting for that. The WBC can order them to face each other, that way the winner will be in position to either fight Mikey for the belt or have it given to them by the WBC. If Mikey vacates that belt, Campbell is going to have to fight somebody for it. Teofimo would be the ideal opponent for him to battle it out for the vacant belt. There are several guys that are in front of Lopez, but it’s unclear how serious they are in wanting to fight or the WBC title. Lopez seems to want it more. He made the trip to the WBC’s headquarters so that he could personally ask WBC president Sulaiman for the honor to fight for the belt.
Meeting Sulaiman in person allows the talented 21-year-old Lopez to use his charisma to get the president of the WBC to grant him his wish. Lopez is going to be around for a long time, and he’s a clear future star. The WBC would be helping themselves by giving Lopez the shot at fighting for the WBC belt. It’s believed that the goal by Lopez’s promoters at Top Rank is for him to position himself for the WBC 135 lb title, and then after he wins that belt, to face WBA/WBO lightweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko in 2020 with all the lightweight titles on the line.
Lomachenko will soon be facing newly crowned IBF lightweight champion Richard Commey (28-2, 25 KOs) after his hand injury heals. Lomachenko wanted to fight Commey on April 12, but the fight couldn’t because of the injury Richard suffered in his recent 2nd round knockout win over Isa Chaniev (13-2, 6 KOs) earlier this month on February 2 on the undercard of Eleider Alvarez vs. Sergey Kovalev at The Ford Center at The Star, in Frisco, Texas.
Mikey will be challenging IBF welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. next month on march 16 for his title. It’s assumed toat Mikey will give up his WC lightweight belt, and move permanently to 140 to fight t light welterweight.
Lopez wants to climb from #5 in the WBC’s rankings to #1 with the help of WBC president Sulaiman. Lopez wants that precious WBC title, because it’s such a historic belt with so much history behind it. A lot of boxing greats have had that title in the past. It wold be a real honor for the Brooklyn, New York born Lopez to have it in his possession as well.
Teofimo has become very popular with boxing fans overnight with his wins over Diego Magdaleno, Mason Menard, William Silva and Vitor Jones. Teofimo recently stopped Magdaleno in the 7th round earlier this month on February 2.