By Sean Jones: Teofimo Lopez Sr says his son, undisputed lightweight champion Teofimo Jr (16-0, 12 KOs), will NOT be fighting for Top Rank any longer unless the fights are on pay-per-view. As far as Lopez Sr is concerned, Teofimo is a PPV fighter ONLY. He won’t fight on regular network television.
It’s doable for Teofimo to fight on PPV from now on if he only faces popular guys like Devin Haney, Ryan Garcia, Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis, Vasily Lomachenko.
But Teofimo will have major problems fighting his mandatory’s against the obscure guys that the sanctioned bodies have ranked. If Teofimo tries to force Top Rank to make ALL of his fights on pay-per-view, we’re going to see a lot of purse bids from now on.
IBF/WBA/WBC/WBO lightweight champion Teofimo’s next fight will be on Triller pay-per-view on June 5th against IBF mandatory George Kambosos Jr in Miami, Florida. The date and the venue still have yet to be made official by Triller.
The reason Teofimo, 23, is fighting on Triller pay-per-view against Kambosos because Teo couldn’t negotiate the match with Top Rank, so it went to a purse bid last February.
Surprisingly, Triller won the purse big with a massive $6 million+ winning bid for Teofimo’s mandatory defense against the little-known Australian fighter Kambosos. Teofimo is naively predicting the event will bring in 2 million buys, but he’s clearly showing his age.
Now it’s on Triller to try and bring in enough pay-per-view buys for them to make a profit or break even.
It’s rumored that the break-even point for Triller is one million buys, which will be a HUGE ask given that casual boxing fans in the U.S have never seen or heard of Kambosos before.
When the fans have never heard of a fighter before, they generally don’t purchase the cards in high numbers.
Arum won’t stand in the way of Teofimo
“I don’t think Bob [Arum] is going to say ‘no’ to money,” said Teofimo Sr to Fighthype when asked if Top Rank will choose not to match Teo against the winner of the Josh Taylor vs. Jose Ramirez.
“We’re not no Mikey Garcia’s. Mikey didn’t have four belts like we have.
“We got mandatory’s. So people don’t understand, nobody is sitting us down.
“We made the decision because we’re not going to get punked [for the George Kambosos Jr title defense]. We already took a low rate for the Lomachenko fight when we took less money to get those belts.
“I told my son, ‘Once you have those belts, you can do whatever you want,’ and that’s what we’re doing right now.
“We’re putting the sport of boxing on the big stand because we’re showing these boxers that they’re worth more than the promoters think that they’re worth.
“We took a stand for that. This is big. This is like the Muhammad Ali era when Muhammad stood for his rights. He didn’t want to go fight in the [Vietnam] war.
“It’s the same s*** we’re doing now with my son. He’s standing for the rights for the fighters.
“They deserve more money, but they’re scared of these promoters because they’re scared of the promoters to sit them down, but we got a contract,” Teofimo Sr said.
Top Rank or any of the promotional companies probably aren’t going to put Teofimo’s fights on pay-per-view if they see it as a money-losing situation.
If Teofimo wants to only fight on PPV, he needs to start dumping his belts because it’s not going to work if he’s going to be defending against fighters that American boxing fans have never heard or seen before.
Triller saved Teofimo this time by bidding an enormous amount of money for his title defense against Kambosos, which likely won’t bring in more than a trickle of PPV buys.
You can argue that once Triller ends up getting badly burned by their decision and lose a lot of money from this, they probably won’t be eager the next time Teofimo defends against another obscure mandatory challenger that fans have little interest in paying to see.
Teofimo Sr will find out the hard way that you can’t stick every fight on pay-per-view when you’re facing over-matched, unknown fighters. That’s why Teofimo will have to start fighting better opposition if he only wants to fight on PPV.
The pay-per-view fights are meant for quality match-ups that the fans have a demand in watching. Unfortunately, Teofimo vs. Kambosos Jr doesn’t meet those criteria.
If Teofimo continues to face little-known opposition, he’s dreaming if he thinks all his fights are going to wind up on PPV in the U.S.
Teofimo will only fight on PPV from now on
“My son needs to fight three times a year. So what is he going to do?” said Teofimo Sr. “He’s [Lopez Jr] heartbroken right now, but he’s making his money.
“He’s going to make a lot of money with my son. I told Bob Arum, the first day I met him, I said, ‘This is the kid that is going to bring up this company, and all they’ve got to do is believe in him.’
“We’re ain’t fighting with Top Rank no more unless it’s pay-per-view. We are pay-per-view. My son has done things that nobody else has done, and we’re in the position now to create a monster in the boxing industry, and no one has seen that in a long, long time.
“The only person that I think has done that is Mike Tyson. So we’re bringing that game into the boxing game.
“The money will come. We fought Lomachenko for pennies, but we’re not doing that no more.
“It’s the takeover, baby. We’re taking over the game of boxing; we’re taking over everybody right now. It’s just a game,” said Teofimo Sr.
We’ll soon see if Teofimo Sr is right about his son only fighting on pay-per-view from now on with Top Rank.
Again, it’s possible Teofimo can fight only on PPV. Still, he’s going to have to take risks by fighting Lomachenko again, which he has no interest in doing, and take on Haney, Ryan Garcia, and Tank Davis.
Lopez will fight Haney if no Taylor vs. Ramirez winner
“We’ll go to Devin [Haney] and squash that bull s*** with the undisputed,” said Teofimo Sr when asked if they can’t get the winner of the Josh Taylor vs. Jose Ramirez fight.
We heard Teofimo Sr tell Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing that they want $10 million to fight against Devin Haney. That’s not going to happen and probably never will. If that’s the asking price for Teofimo to fight Haney, he can forget about that match-up being made.
Teofimo’s win over Vasily Lomachenko last October has clearly gone to his head, making him think he’s ready to make massive money. That’s not reality right now.
It takes more time to create a superstar, and Teofimo only has that close win over the one-armed Lomachenko as far as notable wins.