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Teofimo Lopez is having the time of his life this Times Square fight week and it has taken a life's work to get here
Teofimo Lopez strutted down the catwalk of Manhattan Center during Monday night’s Grand Arrivals, extended his arms like he was late pro wrestler Scott Hall walking down the aisle, shadowboxed for a few seconds, spun around and posed for the camera.
That’s how the WBO and The Ring super lightweight world champion started this fight week and he has made sure to keep the entertainment factor high every chance he has gotten since.
Tuesday evening’s public workout had Lopez keeping loose and dancing to The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Mo Money Mo Problems” and “Hypnotize,” closing out with his ceremonious backflip.
Wednesday night’s press conference had him donning a silver luchador mask for the entire session, while dropping wild lines like: “Yo, New York, just pull up! Pull up and make sure not to pull out. Let’s go! We’re f—ing!”
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In short, Lopez, 27, is having the time of his life. And it is all part of a concerted effort to be every bit the showman that he is the skillful boxer.
With SNK, the video game company, sponsoring The Ring’s Fatal Fury: Times Square on Friday night, live and exclusively on DAZN PPV, even that went into Lopez’ consideration toward entertaining.
“Even though we have the endorsers of SNK, no one is supporting that, so I look at it like all these things, you just have to find different avenues. For all these upcoming fighters, find different avenues now ,” Lopez told DAZN News a month prior to this point during an exclusive interview over Zoom.
“Right now I don’t know if people have noticed, I’m doing little different things and taking a bit more time when I’m resting to do these things. 'What other ways can I have people know this character I am?'”
A look at his Instagram will show this.
“Dancing — doing salsa, bachata — creating a space outside of just boxing and then bringing it back to boxing by intertwining them,” he said. “Being a character, making funny things.
“Just a slight bit, not too much because at the end of the day,” he stressed, “none of this matters unless we win.”
Friday night, he will look to defend his WBO and The Ring championships against rugged interim WBO titleholder Arnold Barboza Jr.
Ever the entertainer, Lopez vows to turn the bout into “The Times Square Takeover,” collaborating with Superare Fight Shop to sell t-shirts with that insignia.
In an unprecedented fight in "The Crossroads of the World,” the one-two punch that Lopez aims to deliver is a boxing win that entertains from start to finish.
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Part of the reason Lopez is able to be the showman is it’s genuinely part of his personality.
The other parts: he is diligent in his approach to boxing, exhausting avenues in pursuit of getting better in the ring, while having found peace outside of it.
Lopez is a doting dad to a toddler son, who will be four this year.
“Time goes by so quick,” he says with a smile on a Zoom session with DAZN News. “Just enjoying those moments, it kind of brings me briefly to another world — his world — so I love it.”
He added: “There’s peace. He actually brings out the kid in me.”
In the ring, in addition to his dad, Lopez has brought in trainer Milton Lacroix to work on his efforts this camp.
“He’s definitely been a good arsenal in my craft again to bring back to really stay loose and not really be all tight and stiff and be who I really am — and that’s a slick boxer,” Lopez says about Lacroix’s techniques.
Bringing Lacroix back into the fold also marks a bit of a full circle for Lopez’ boxing career as both Teofimo Lopez Sr. and Lacroix are the reason he even picked up boxing as a kid.
Lopez remembers it well.
“My father was wanting to become a boxer at one particular time,” Lopez recounts. “By that time he was either in his late 20s or early 30s. As fighters we know that’s kind of late. My father would take me to different gyms. He’d take me to Red Hook, [Brooklyn] to Gleason’s [Gym], different spots especially in New York, and just one day I just caught on like this. I wound up putting on some boxing gloves in the boxing gym."
As Lopez’ story goes, his father was a limousine driver at the time. One day, Lopez Sr. went to park the limo, and by the time he returned to the gym, Lacroix had Jr. don gloves and learn two to three combinations.
A young Lopez was sparring by the following week.
“I was getting my ass handed to me,” he says, “but that’s the only way you learn.”
The steady sweet science grind only increased from there as Lopez became a gym regular, later working up the amateur ranks.
“My family had me train and go home,” Lopez recalls. “All I did was train and go home, train and go home. So I really didn’t experience the real world until I was like 21. So imagine that.”
At 21, Lopez made a splash on national TV, taking just 44 seconds to sleep Mason Menard back in December 2018, while striking the Heisman pose after his win.
Four fights later, with Fortnite dances in between, by the following year, he was crowned world champion for the first time, bulldozing his way through Richard Commey inside of two rounds.
If the Menard KO served as his splashy introduction to the masses, Lopez strapped the rocket to boxing ascension to his back with the drubbing of Commey and an IBF lightweight world title win.
At just 23, 'The Takeover' was arguably complete as an underdog Lopez defeated pound-for-pound great Vasiliy Lomachenko by outboxing the sweet scientist to a unanimous decision and unified lightweight crown in October 2020.
A few years later, in June 2023, Lopez would become a two-division world champion by scoring a unanimous decision over Josh Taylor to seize the WBO and The Ring super lightweight world titles he still currently holds.
Through it all, Lopez has had ups and downs with his father/trainer Lopez Sr., though he vows the love always outweighs any static.
“I’d say my father and I, our relationship it’s up in the air. It’s like any father-son relationship,” he says. “You’re going to have your moments where you guys love each other, you’re going to have your moments that you despise each other. But overall it’s always love.
“When it comes to it, he’s my best man,” Lopez says proudly of his dad. “He really is. If anyone has my back, it’s going to be my father.
“My father, man, I love him. I’ll always ride with him,” Lopez tacks on for good measure. "He puts me through a lot of s—t. I ain’t gonna lie. But it builds character.”
And building a character is something Lopez specializes at.
Watch two incredible fight nights this week only on DAZN
Fight fans are in for a treat this week, with two amazing fight exclusively DAZN PPV.
- May 2: Ryan Garcia vs Rolly Romero; Devin Haney vs Jose Ramirez; Teofimo Lopez vs Arnold Barboza Jr.
- May 3: Canelo Alvarez vs William Scull
Fight fans can purchase either these fight nights individually for $59.99 US; £/€21.99 UK/IRE; $24.99 ROW per PPV or take advantage of the DAZN Knockout Weekend Bundle where both fight cards can be purchased for $90 US; £34.99 UK and €34.99 Europe.
