By Allan Fox: Teofimo Lopez isn’t worried about Devin Haney training with boxing legend Floyd Mayweather Jr. Most fans would see Haney training with Mayweather as a significant advantage, but not Teofimo.
IBF lightweight champion Teofimo (15-0, 12 KOs) sees the 3-year-old Mayweather as powerless to help Haney inside the ring. Just because Haney (24-, 15 Kos) trains with Mayweather, it won’t change the situation.
Devin lacks power, size, and speed
Haney is still too weak and too slow to handle the power, size, and speed of Teofimo. That’s okay. Haney is still a good fighter.
There’s no chance that Haney and Teofimo will be fighting in the immediate future. Teofimo is looking to face WBA/WBC/WBO lightweight champion Vasiliy Lomachenko in September, according to their promoter Bob Arum. After that, Teofimo will move up to 140 and go after the champions in that division.
Mayweather can’t fight for Haney
“Thoughts on [Floyd] Mayweather training Devin? All I can say is Floyd isn’t fighting for you. Floyd isn’t fighting for you, bro. That’s all I can say,” said Teofimo Lopez on his Instagram live.
Indeed, Mayweather can’t fight for Haney, and he’s wasting his time trying to pass on his knowledge to him. All that stuff that Mayweather is teaching Haney are things that probably won’t work anyway.
They worked for Mayweather because he had blinding hand speed, which enabled him to do things that slower fighters can’t.
There are some fighters that Mayweather can help, but it’s a waste of time for him to be working with Haney. He always knows what works for his limited physical skills, and if he tries to use all the things Mayweather is teaching him, he’ll probably get knocked out.
Teofimo was recently trying to get a fight with Haney but seemed reluctant to make it. Although Haney said that he wanted to fight Teofimo, he wasn’t pushing his promoter Eddie Hearn to make it. The way Haney acted in response to Teofimo calling him out was the complete opposite for when Ryan Garcia was showing interest in fighting him.
Haney was all over Ryan, wanting to fight him like crazy. But it was a different story with Teofimo. Haney didn’t react to his call out with the same enthusiasm.
Lomachenko vs. Teofimo in September
“We’ll hopefully do a similar thing with Loma and Lopez, which we’re scheduling for September,” said Arum to IFL TV on waning to stage Lomachenko vs. Teofimo in front of 2,500 fans with space between them in an arena. “Well, fighters are fighters.
“They’re not in the weeds like we are, figuring out why the fight isn’t happening,” said Arum, when told that Teofimo doubts that Lomachenko fight will happen.
“One thing I must say is when I talked to Loma, and I talked to Lopez and suggested, since the fight won’t happen until September, to give them each an interim fight, they both rejected it. They both said, ‘We want to fight the other guy, and we don’t want to do interim tune-up fights,” said Arum.