Teofimo Lopez’s father breaks down his disastrous defeat to Shakur Stevenson

Teofimo Lopez Sr. was confident ahead of his son's brutal defeat

The fight world did not see the Teofimo Lopez (22-2, 13 KO’s) we are accustomed to on Saturday. 

Heading into his matchup against Shakur Stevenson (25-0, 11 KO’s), fans were expecting a 50-50 battle. 

Both men have proven they can boxing handidly against the sport's greatest, while their contrasting styles seemed to promise fireworks in New York.

However, on the day, a different story was told. Stevenson’s speed, laser-sharp reflexes and attuned boxing brain left his counterpart in a world of trouble. 

Lopez looked akin to a lost boy in the ring, slow to the punch; any move he made was quickly smothered and countered by his American adversary. 

It was a humbling defeat for Lopez – who has previously got the better of both Vasily Lomachenko and Josh Taylor – as he succumbed to a 119-110 unanimous decision defeat. 

Speaking following his sons disater at MSG, father and trainer Teofimo Lopez Sr. revealed what he felt went wrong on the night.

“Everything was fine [leading into the fight],” Lopez Sr. told Seconds Out.

“The sparring sessions were what motivated me to this fight, that I was 100% sure we was going to win. For some reason the game plan, my son didn’t do what I told him he was supposed to do. His rhythm was supposed to be different where we were supposed to stop Shakur from doing whatever Shakur does best.

“Congratulations to him for winning, but that was not my son in there. I think probably the networks and everybody, the media, everything leading up to this fight, talking already about Shakur fighting in May where the winner was supposed to go fight in May against whoever it was.

“So I think that probably got to him, you know what I’m saying? People talking about me being drunk, all that stuff — you know, when he went to the press conference and I wasn’t there. I didn’t show up because I was resting and I think all that affected him in this fight.

“Like a lot of people say, my son is like mentally easy to mess with and how you going to fight a fight when everybody wants you to lose? I don’t know what happened. It just looked like all his powers were not there, like everything that we planned, everything that we did in sparring, everything that we planned to do was not there. His power was not there. I was in shock, man.

“I think a lot of this has to do with everybody not wanting him to win. There wasn’t not one person talking good about him. So that has to stop…The average person can have an opinion but when you have all the networks saying that my son gonna get his ass whooped and that every time my son looks at social media they are talking bad about him. It’s not right. That got to change.”