Teofimo Lopez Jnr had a mostly quiet year defending his WBO junior welterweight crown against Jamaine Ortiz and Steve Claggett. Come 2025, however, Lopez wants to live up to his nickname of "The Takeover" once again by being involved in big-time fights.
To prepare for the occasion, Lopez, 21-1 (13 KOs), recently linked up with Eddy Reynoso, adding Saul "Canelo" Alvarez’s head coach and lifelong confidant to assist his father and career-long trainer Teofimo Snr.
During a training session this week in San Diego, Lopez cleared the air on a series of potential matchups against Devin Haney, Ryan Garcia, Terence Crawford and others.
“I waited a week for Team Haney to respond and they never did – we offered them a good, reasonable offer of $2.4 million guaranteed and a 55-45 split on pay-per-view at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles,” Lopez told Constantino Garcia of Little Giant Boxing. “You wasted my time. You wasted my time too many times. I had to air it out. I was told to stay radio silent while we were trying to negotiate. But I had to.
“Right now, Ryan does not have a fight. He's in the same kind of predicament I'm in. I'll call Oscar [De La Hoya] later to see what's up. Everything has to make sense. It can't be wishful thinking and let's just make a fight. We have to give them something to be interested in. I try to play it fair as best as I can as the king of the division at 140 pounds.
“Crawford, stop being a bitch, yo, and make the fight at 154 pounds. C'mon, take care of this young kid. Get me out of the ring. Get me out and put me in a stretcher. Everybody just be talking. And to everybody, stop ducking Teofimo. C'mon. He always fights the best. Where are you guys at? We'll see who wants it. But, literally, fuck all of them.”
Lopez also offered an update on how training has been going so far with Reynoso.
“It's been great,” said Lopez. “Both of them have a good point of view of what they are seeing in me and what I can do. They have both been collaborating very well so far and I can't wait for what's in store. The best thing about it is that I combine both of their styles into mine and you guys will see another version.”
Manouk Akopyan is a sports journalist, writer and broadcast reporter whose work has appeared on ESPN, Fox Sports, USA Today, The Guardian, Newsweek, Men’s Health, NFL.com, Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Ring Magazine and more. He has been writing for BoxingScene since 2018. Manouk is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and the MMA Journalists Association. He can be reached on , , and , through email at manouk[dot]akopyan[at]gmail.com or via .