By Dan Ambrose: Teofimo Lopez says it will take a lot of money, a 3-to-5-year contract given to him by a promoter, to come out of retirement to resume his career.
WBO light welterweight champion Teofimo could be waiting forever if he believes he’ll get a new $100 million contract for three to five years. The problem is that he’s too erratic, and his ego goes out of control after he picks up a significant win.
Although Teofimo’s victory over WBO 140-lb champion Josh Taylor was excellent, it wasn’t a big enough win to justify getting a new $100M contract.
Taylor had arguably been beaten in his last fight by Jack Catterall last year in February. Not a huge puncher, Catterall knocked Taylor down in the eighth round. If you’re a promoter, you’ll know that Taylor was past it, and vulnerable to Teofimo and likely many more fighters in the division.
We saw the same odd behavior from Teo after his victory over Vasyl Lomachenko in 2o20. Teofimo is a textbook example of how success breeds failure.
After Teofimo’s win over Loma, he praised himself nonstop, believing he was the best, rather than seeing the victory as a result of external factors due Lomachenko being injured. Now, Teofimo is again sabotaging his career by retiring and asking for $100 million to come back.
“You got to hit it at the highest mark to where people are like, ‘Nevermind, then let him be retired,'” said Teofimo Lopez to the media when asked if it doesn’t matter how much money is thrown at him, he still won’t come out of retirement.
“But if [the nine-figure contract] it comes, then okay, we got something going. Like I said, it’s a three to a five-year contract that I’m looking at, and you can throw a big number on there,” said Teofimo
In the aftermath of that win, Teofimo ended up sitting out of the ring for an entire year, and when he came back, he lost to George Kambosos Jr. Then, to top it off, Teofimo chose not to rematch Kambosos and decided instead to 140.
It’s unclear whether Teofimo’s contract with Top Rank is up because promoter Bob Arum said last week that Teo still has three years left.
You can argue that Arum would know more about how much time is left on Teofimo’s contract than he does. If the 25-year-old Teofimo (19-1, 13 KOs) is signed with Top Rank for the next three years, he can forget his delusional asking price of $100M for his return to the ring.
