Teofimo Lopez eked out a controversial win over Sandor Martin in New York city tonight. After ten close and competitive rounds, judge Guido Cavalleri scored the bout 95-94 for Martin. The other two judges, Max DeLuca and Pasquale Procopio, rendered 96-93 and 97-92 scorecards for Lopez. Those two scores felt a bit wide and immediately drew the ire of some boxing fans on social media.
“It’s so hard to fight somebody like this when they’re running the whole time”, said Lopez (18-1, 13 knockouts) after the fight. “Every time this guy committed, I countered and got him.”
“I apologize to everybody tonight. This is not how we perform. But listen, our dancer partner was running the whole time.”
Martin (40-3, 13 KO’s) felt that he did enough to earn have his hand raised.
“I won this fight clearly. For one judge, I only won two rounds. Really? There were two knockdowns. The referee didn't count one of the knockdowns.”
“He missed all of his punches. That's a robbery.”
At the end of the opening round, a clash of heads (typical in fights between an orthodox and southpaw boxers) opened a cut on the bridge of Martin’s nose. Although it wasn’t a bad cut, it would cause blood to flow down the Spaniard’s face and chest for the remainder of the bout.
Martin appeared to score two knockdowns in the fight, but only received credit for one. At the beginning of the second round, he put Lopez down with a counter check hook to the temple as the American lunged in. Referee Ricky Gonzalez correctly called it a knockdown, giving Martin a 10-8 round.However, about halfway through the seventh, Martin once again caught Lopez lunging in and dropped him with a check right hook. But this time Gonzalez incorrectly ruled it a slip.
According to CompuBox, Lopez connected on 97 of 391 total punches (25%), including 55 body shots. Martin was credited with landing 77 of 244 total punches (32%), and only 11 to the body. It seemed that Teo’s higher work rate and body punching advantage are what swayed the bout in his favor.
Lopez mentioned he would like to fight 140-pound division kingpin Josh Taylor and Regis Prograis. He also said he would be willing to do a rematch with George Kambosos Jr, who beat him last year in a lightweight bout.
The Lopez vs Martin junior welterweight fight headlined a Top Rank show broadcast live from Madison Square Garden on ESPN and the ESPN+ app.
Notable Undercard Results:
In the co-main, Jared Anderson scored an explosive second-round TKO win over Jerry Forrest to improve to 13-0 (13 KO’s). “Big Baby” appears to be the best American heavyweight prospect in quite some time.
Undefeated Puerto Rican junior middleweight prospect Xander Zayas improved to 15-0 (10 KO’s) with a UD8 win over Alexis Salazar Flores.
Both lightweight Keyshawn Davis and junior welterweight Delante Johnson, members of the 2020 American Olympic Boxing Team, improved to 7-0 (5 KO’s) with victories in eight-round bouts.