By Brad Slotnick: George Kambosos Jr is furious about his fight this Saturday night being postponed due to undisputed lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez Jr testing positive for COVID 19.
IBF mandatory Kambosos Jr (19-0 10 KOs) will now need to wait until August 14th to face Teofimo (16-0, 12 KOs) on Triller Fight Club on PPV.
Kambosos Jr is convinced that he would have beaten Teofimo if the fight had stayed scheduled.
The obvious question you have to ask is why didn’t Top Rank make sure that Teofimo had been given a vaccination before he signed a contract to fight Kambosos Jr.
With the threat of getting sick from COVID being everpresent, Top Rank should have ensured that Teofimo was given hi vaccination. Obviously, they’re not promoting Teofimo’s card on Triller, but they still should have ensured that he was given a vaccine shot.
Kambosos calls Teofimo irresponsible
“I would have been undisputed champion this weekend, I know it, and you know it,” said Kambosos Jr on social media, reacting to Teofimo’s positive COVID 19 test.
“Your actions and decisions have affected not only our fight but everyone involved in this fight.
“Pure irresponsibility on your whole side. I’m going to take you out worse than ever for everything. You can run, but you can’t hide,” said Kambosos Jr in letting Teofimo have it.
Absolutely devastated. I will be Champion. Thank you to everyone for the support world wide. pic.twitter.com/rpMgcyodT8
— George “Ferocious” Kambosos Jr (@georgekambosos) June 15, 2021
As you can see, Kambosos Jr is livid about Teofimo’s positive test. What’s unclear is whether Teofimo had been vaccinated or not.
You want to give the 23-year-old Teo the benefit of the doubt and believe that maybe he was one of the small percentages of people that still wind up contracting the COVID 19 virus despite being vaccinated.
What makes one believe that Teofimo hadn’t been vaccinated was that he didn’t come out and claim that he’d received a shot. Instead, Teo said he wanted to do the right thing by pulling out of the fight to keep the other fighters from becoming ill.
By now you’ve heard the news that I have had to withdraw from the fight due to COVID.
Being a champion means doing hard things. NO EXCEPTIONS. And I choose to keep my fellow athletes safe.
(Part One)— Teofimo Lopez (@TeofimoLopez) June 16, 2021
Arum reacts to Teofimo’s positive COVID 19 results
“We restructured Teofimo’s contract, and I hope as the result of the restructure that he didn’t get the COVID,” said Bob Arum to Fighthype.
“But again, we tell all our fighters, ‘You guys are fighting for big money, and the promoters are laying out big money, get yourself vaccinated, so you don’t contact the COVID.’
“Now, you take the two fighters here, Fury is totally vaccinated, and I talked to Shelly Finkel a little while ago, and he said, Wilder has been fully vaccinated, and their corners have been vaccinated.
“That’s taking responsibility. Now Teofimo, he was off with this Triller thing and so forth.
“It was no reason before he went into training that he didn’t get vaccinated. No reason, and if he had gotten vaccinated, he wouldn’t have lost his payday.
“I feel sorry for him, but the fight will happen. But again, this is different from when we first went into the bubble last June, and we had every other fight with a guy getting COVID because nobody really knew how to handle it.
“Now with the vaccinations, anybody that gets COVID, shame on them because they hadn’t taken the time or they for some crazy reason decided not to get vaccinated. That’s nuts,” said Arum.
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum can’t be pleased about all this because it’ll put a crimp in his plans to have Teofimo fight twice this year.
With the fight with Kambosos Jr moved to August 14th, Arum won’t be able to schedule Teofimo to fight on October 2nd as he’d originally been planning on doing.
As a result, Teofimo’s only fight this year will be for Triller pay-per-view against Kambosos Jr in August.