By Dan Ambrose: Shawn Porter says Teofimo Lopez showed flaws in his game in his victory over WBO light welterweight champion Josh Taylor and will have problems against Gervonta Davis and Devin Haney.
Porter noted that Teofimo was in the “reactive” mode against Taylor, using counter-punching the entire fight. That worked because Taylor doesn’t have a high work rate and is not a huge puncher.
What Porter doesn’t realize is Teofimo is ALWAYS in the “reactive” mode because he’s a simple counter-puncher/pot-shot fighter, and those guys are incapable of throwing combinations or taking the lead in fights. In other words, they await for their opponent to throw a shot so they can counter.
When they do take the initiative, it’s always the single pot-shot Mayweather stuff and never combinations, which is why they struggle against fighters that unload. Mayweather was arguably beaten twice in his career by the high-volume puncher Jose Luis Castillo and Marcos Maidana.
Yeah, Floyd won those fights, but they were considered robberies. Those guys exposed the limitations of Mayweather’s pot-shot fighting style like George Kambosos Jr exposed Teofimo.
Shawn spotted the flaws in Teofimo’s offense, which has always been there from the start, and guys like Gervonta & Haney would take advantage of this. Of course, those aren’t the only ones that will beat Teofimo.
Teofimo Lopez isn’t going to beat high-volume punchers like Subriel Matias or Regis Prograis with his pot-shotting, counter-punching style because those guys never stop throwing shots, and they hit hard.
Unfortunately for Teofimo, he’ll never beat fighters that throw a lot of punches because he’s stuck with the Mayweather single-punch pot-shotting style, which only works against fighters that don’t throw a lot like Josh Taylor.
Teofimo = limited counter-puncher
Against the low-volume fighter Josh Taylor, the pot-shotting single-punch Canelo-esque style worked for Teofimo to lead him to victory.
However, against fighters like Prograis & Matias, who overwhelm their opponents with nonstop power shots, Teofimo will be transformed into the limited, ill-equipped guy that lost to George Kambosos Jr.
Those guys are more like Dmitry Bivol with their combination punching, and we saw how he took advantage of Canelo Alvarez’s single shot, pot-shot, counter-punching style. Canelo couldn’t handle a combination puncher, and neither will Teofimo Lopez.
George Kambosos Jr beat Teofimo because he’s a high-volume combination puncher who overwhelmed Teo’s counter-punching style.
Kambosos was like a machine gun, with his offense going up against a fighter armed with a semi-auto weapon in Teofimo.
It’s unknown whether Teofimo (19-1, 13 KOs) will ever fight Tank Davis or Haney because he’s already talking about retirement.
Last night, Teofimo talked about retirement, and who knows whether he’s serious. At the very least, this is an example of Teo’s instability and lack of mental strength to keep his career on track. You can argue that Teofimo isn’t mentally grounded enough to take advantage of his massive win over Taylor.
After Teofimo’s best career victory over Vasyl Lomachenko in October 2020, his ego shot out of control and wound up sitting out of the ring for an entire year before he came back and was beaten by a very average fighter in George Kambosos Jr in 2021.
“9-3 at worst. He looked great. It looks like he caught his rhythm right around the fifth round, sixth round. You could see the confidence just start to pour in and he didn’t let Josh get started,” said Shawn Porter to Fighthype, discussing Teofimo Lopez’s win over
“He didn’t let Josh get started. Josh wasn’t able to figure it out Teo tonight. Teo laid it down, man. No,” said Porter when asked if Josh Taylor is done at the top level. “The best part about it was this was elite against elite. One guy was better than the other one tonight.
“Even though this was a great fight for him and a great performance, I could still see some chinks in his armor. Do you know what I mean? It looked like his stamina wasn’t quite there. It looked like he didn’t really have a pace.
“He was more reactive, and that’s what his dad told him he wanted to be in this fight anyway. Get back to his old self. Explosive counter-punching, getting his fighter off balance, and things like that.
“Who do you want to see Teo with next? You want to see him with the big dogs now. I wouldn’t favor him against Gervonta. That’s tough night against Devin,” said Porter.
