Teofimo Lopez’s last three years have been strange.
Defeating Lomachenko, followed by issues with his promoter, and a loss to George Kambosos Jnr. In short, chaos seems to follow Teofimo Lopez these days.
His return to the ring saw he stop Pedro Campa, a durable, but fringe world-level guy, which opened up the door for his December 10th bout at Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theater, against two-division world champion Jose Pedraza.
“It’s not someone that I would have liked to face,” said Lopez during an interview with Mark Kriegel. “However, with everything that’s going on, so many other fights are being matched right now. This was the best opportunity right now.”
Lopez now 25-years-old, will look to face a former champion on a night that has been good to him, the boxing event after the Heisman trophy is awarded to the best college football player.
“Everything happens for a reason. I’m just looking forward to making it a phenomenal end of the year to go into 2023 for a championship,” said Lopez. “I said it would take two or three fights to get him where I want him to be,” Shields said. “You seen the difference from the past two fights. He boxed when he had to box. He stayed in the middle of the ring, like I wanted him to. A couple times he got on the ropes, when he wasn’t supposed to. I had to jump on him about that, but overall, yeah, he did 100 percent what we trained to do.”