Junior welterweight titleholder Teofimo Lopez, who continues to search for his next professional dance partner, said that Subriel Matias – a former belt holder in the division – doesn’t measure up to his standards as an opponent.
In the same breath, during at the recent Ring Magazine awards in London, Lopez said he didn’t reject a proposed fight with Matias that was many miles down the road toward becoming official before it was suddenly called off.
“I didn’t turn down no fight, OK?” Lopez told Not Just Boxing. “I’m gonna say it just like this: I did not turn no damn fight down.”
No matter the rationale behind, or parties responsible for, pulling the plug on Lopez-Matias, one common denominator throughout all the difficulties in securing a suitable foe for Lopez’s next fight has been impossible to ignore: Lopez himself.
In recent years, Lopez, 21-1 (13 KOs) has managed to blow up or blow off several possible fights while exasperating the folks attempting to do business with him, exhibiting a pickiness or pettiness – depending on one’s perspective – that seems to have worn on his promoter, Top Rank, and other associates. (BoxingScene’s David Greisman offers an excellent summation here.)
Most aggravating to fans, perhaps, has been Lopez’s slavish relationship to the notion that he is a boxing superstar and a massive box-office draw who has earned the right to play gatekeeper to only the highest-quality competition – especially when he has clearly demonstrated that he doesn’t.
“We always fight the best of the best, but we don’t believe that Subriel Matias is a worthy opponent to fight for this,” Lopez said, lifting aloft his junior welterweight world title belt.
Steve Claggett, Jamaine Ortiz, Sandor Martin and Pedro Campa, it seems, never received this memo.
Lopez belittled the fan base and recent results of Matias, 21-2 (21 KOs), who dropped a unanimous decision – and his version of the junior welterweight title belt – to Liam Paro on his home soil of Puerto Rico in June. But Matias bounced back with a stoppage of Roberto Ramirez in November, while Lopez hasn’t fought since being pushed by the seven-loss Claggett in a win in June. Since defeating a grizzled Josh Taylor at New York’s Madison Square Garden, Lopez has headlined at the Michelob Ultra Arena and the James L. Knight Center. He hasn’t knocked out an opponent since topping Campa in 2022.
“Do you think a guy who has no fan base, really, lost in his hometown – or in his own home country – deserves this type of ambience and magnitude to fight the best fighter in the weight division?” he said of Matias.
Lopez now appears to be targeting Richardson Hitchins, who in December won a split decision over Liam Paro (and took the belt that Paro had lifted off Matias).
“There’s so much money to be moved around with Top Rank and ESPN, if this is the last year, let’s finish it with a bang,” Lopez said of the rumored impending parting of ways between his promoter and its network of record. “We could do a unification [with the] IBF world champion that just won, beating Liam Paro – Richardson Hitchins. That’s one that we could do.”
Only time will tell.