This time last year Teofimo Lopez Sr. was the mad man in the attic. He was telling everyone within earshot that his son and trainee, Teofimo Lopez Jr., would blow out Vasiliy Lomachenko. No sweat. Lopez Jr. was then but a prospect coming off a vicious knockout of club-level Mason Menard. Lomachenko was a three-division titleholder with a sui generis skillset. Everyone scoffed, rolled their eyes, chalked it up to to Sr.’s usual tendency to gloat about his son.
It turns out he may not be so crazy.
On Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, Lopez did away with Richard Commey, a hard-punching Ghanian lightweight titleholder, inside two rounds. Prior to the fight, Lopez’s father predicted an early knockout. Mad man? More like prophet.
“I had said that it wouldn’t go past the fifth or sixth round,” Lopez Sr. told Boxing Junkie. “I said it could be another Mason Menard fight. I knew once (my son) hurt him, he had to finish him. Commey’s a big puncher. He was on a string of like four knockouts. We had to take him out right away.”
The pivotal punch was a booming overhand right that instantly crippled Commey, who was loading up on one of his own.
“We talked about it (that punch) during training camp,” Lopez Sr. said. “It’s a punch that we throw when somebody leans in. Commey leans in a lot with the right hand. We knew we were going to catch him. We just had to be a little bit faster than he was. and we caught him right on the chin, caught him in a good spot.”
Now father and son can focus on the man the elder Lopez has been calling out for more than a year.
“I’ve been saying that for a long time,” Lopez Sr. said. “My son will take all the belts from Lomachenko in 2020.”
And as if his son needed an additional boost against the No. 1 fighter pound-for-pound, Lopez Sr. says the knockout of Commey will play with Lomachenko’s mind. Lomachenko witnessed the devastation from ringside.
“That’s why we did it (knockout Commey),” Lopez Sr. said. “We gonna show everybody we got the biggest punch in boxing right now at his weight division. 135. Nobody cracking like him.”