By Matt Lieberman: Teofimo Lopez is planning on parlaying a victory over IBF mandatory George Kambosos Jr on May 29th into a fight against former two-division world champion Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis for later this year.
The constantly planning IBF/WBA/WBC/WBO lightweight champion Teofimo (16-0, 12 KOs) has a vision of being freed up from the remaining 3 1/2 year contract with Top Rank.
Once the contract with Top Rank is no more, Teofimo will try and put together a fight against Tank (24-0, 23 KOs), Ryan Garcia, and Devin Haney.
Last month, Teofimo struck it rich with his decision to take his title defense against Kambosos (19-0, 10 KOs) to a purse bid, which Triller won with a $6.02 million offer, beating out Top Rank and Matchroom Boxing.
Although Teofimo won the bid, it’s still unknown if his pay-per-view fight with Kambosos will bring in the buys that will help his career. It might be a total fail for Triller. Top Rank obviously knows what they’re doing with them bidding in the $2 million range for the Teofimo vs. Kambosos fight.
Indeed, there’s an excellent chance that Teofimo will come out of his tarnished with his fight with Kambosos, bringing in very few buys. If that happens, Teofimo, 23, will be back at square one, a guy that talks incessantly about “knowing my worth” but still isn’t a PPV attraction.
The end result, Teofimo won’t be able to use the buy rate from the Kambosos fight to lure Tank, Ryan Garcia or Haney to fight him.
“The guy I think, everybody thinks, will be a 50-50 would be me and ‘Tank’ Davis,” said Teofimo to the AK & Barak Show. “Even I don’t believe it will be, I know what I can always bring to the table. I think a lot of people will like the fight.”
“I would love to fight ‘Tank’ Davis. I would love to knock him out. A lot of people talk about it, there will be a 50-50 fight. I think that’s the most if we mentioned Ryan Garcia and Devin Haney and all that.”
If the Teofimo-Davis fight comes off, Tank will likely be the favorite because he looks more talented and has speed, power, and ability. Teofimo wasn’t impressive against Vasily Lomachenko or Masayoshi Nakatani.
The New Yorker Teofimo is a good talker, though he does a good job of building himself up how Adrien Broner and Ryan Garcia both do by bragging and trash-talking. But as far as actual ability, Teofimo looks more like a weight-bully a fighter that competes in a division below his actual frame size.
In a controversial move, Teofimo chose to defend his IBF title against Kambosos Jr rather than give Vasily Lomachenko a rematch or look to fight WBC champion, Devin Haney.
Either of those fights would have surely given Teofimo more attention from the boxing world, but they also would have been perilous fights.
That might explain why Teofimo chose to take the lesser risk of facing the 27-year-old Kambosos. There’s much less risk for Teofimo fighting the Australian Kambosos, and he can use the fight as a showcase to look good.
Teofimo believes that he beats every fighter in the 135-lb division, but serious questions remain after his less than dominating performance against an injured Vasily Lomachenko on October 17th. That fight showed clearly that Teofimo isn’t as good as he thinks he is.
He looks like a fighter who uses his size to gain an advantage over smaller fighters. That’s the one takeaway this writer got from watching Teofimo’s win over Lomachenko. Teo looked like a melted-down 140-pounder, using his size to beat a guy that should be fighting at 130.