Hearn lectures Teofimo Lopez Sr: “Take it on the chin and come again’

By Jack Tiernan: Eddie Hearn got on his soapbox to lecture Teofimo Lopez Sr. in response to him messaging him after his son Teo’s 12 round split decision to George Kambosos Jr last Saturday night in a Matchroom Boxing show at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Teofimo Sr. believed that his son had been robbed by the judges, two of which scored it for the challenger Kambosos Jr. 115-112, 115-111.

Not surprisingly, Teofimo Sr. sounded off, letting Hearn know that he was unhappy with how the fight was scored, and you can’t blame him for having done so.

“He messaged me saying he can’t believe what I did,” said Hearn to Boxing Social about Teofimo Sr. having messaged him after Teo’s loss to Kambosos.

“If Teofimo Sr is saying that stuff, how do you expect your son to learn and reflect on what happened. You got beat; it’s no disgrace. Take it on the chin and come again.”

You have to wonder if Hearn would be talking like this if Canelo Alvarez had lost last weekend to a fighter like Kambosos. Would Hearn be lecturing Canelo and his family about needing to ‘take it on the chin’ and move on? My guess is he wouldn’t.

I don’t know that this writer agrees with the lecturing that Hearn is doing about Teofimo Sr. being off base because he thought his son deserved the win.

This writer watched the fight again with the sound off, and I had Teofimo edging it based on his much harder shots. The crowd noise made it seem that Kambosos was doing better than he was, and that’s something I picked up on when I turned the sound off.

Also, Teofimo was the one moving forward the entire fight, pressuring Kambosos and forcing the action. If you look at the replay of the contest, you’ll see that Kambosos was doing a lot of spoiling with the tying up of Teofimo and moving around the ring to avoid mixing it up.

There was a TON of spoiling from Kambosos, which is why one of the judges likely saw it for Teofimo. If Kambosos hadn’t done all the holding, he might have been knocked out.

Teofimo Sr’s assertion that his son should have won by a 10-2 score was hard to agree with, but you could make a case that Teo may have done enough to edge it based on him landing the more powerful shots in each round.

Teofimo (16-1, 12 Kos) had knocked Kambosos Jr (20-0, 10 KOs) down in the tenth round, and there were many close rounds to the point where it was strictly subjective in which fighter you felt was doing the better work.

There’s no question that the punches that Teofimo was landing were much harder than the lighter variety shots from the Australian Kambosos, which is why you can understand why one of the judges had him winning.