Cris Esqueda / Matchroom BoxingWhen Teofimo Lopez Jnr puts up his junior welterweight title against Shakur Stevenson on Saturday at New York’s Madison Square Garden, the hope is that two of boxing’s smoothest operators will make the sport proud on arguably its grandest stage.
Yet that was anything but the case when the fighters crossed paths at Thursday’s press conference.
Expectations for these events have never been lower, yet somehow Lopez and Stevenson managed to drag their final public-speaking engagement ahead of Saturday’s 12-round “Ring 8” main event into the most revolting bottom-gutter muck they could dredge up.
It started benignly enough with the undercard presser and some initial remarks from a coterie of promoters, managers and trainers, but the affair quickly dissolved into odd sound effects, middle-school taunts and surreal exchanges that often spun off into a sort of uncomfortable, cartoonish performance art that would have been too lewd and uncreative for a backwoods semi-pro wrestling outfit.
Lopez yammered sound effects, spoke over everyone with a microphone and cackled endlessly at his own “jokes,” which were mostly versions of planting body parts into his opponent’s mouth.
“It gonna feel like a foot in your mouth,” Lopez crowed, over and over.
Stevenson responded with rapier wit – “I’ll smack the shit out of you” – and spiced things up with the n-word on multiple occasions, eventually climbing out of his seat at the dais to half-heartedly advance on Lopez. At one point, he produced a bottle of liquor as a “gift” for Lopez’s father/trainer, who was absent from the presser and reported to be under the weather and who previously has been suspected of being intoxicated at several public events around his son’s fights.
Stunningly, in very nearly the same breath, Stevenson was asked about his bussing in 300 disadvantaged children from his native New Jersey to watch the fight.
“It means everything to me,” Stevenson said. “This is the first time it’s really been announced. I usually do this before a lot of my fights back on this side of town. But it means everything to me that the kids get that type of motivation. They get to see somebody that’s from the same circumstances do the same things they can be doing in their future. So my main thing is giving them motivation and making sure they’re straight.”
So the kids are going to be doing this in the future?
When it came his turn to speak, Matchroom head Eddie Hearn attempted to bring some semblance of order – and, you know, actual boxing – to the proceedings.
“This is everything,” he said of Saturday’s main event. “Everyone talks about making boxing great again, and you've got to tip your hat off to Shakur and Teo, because Shakur is dominating the 135lbs division. Both fighters know that there's money out there, deals out there, to just keep on doing the standard thing, but these aren't standard guys. These are guys that are chasing greatness in a sold-out arena that has hosted Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Robinson and Rocky Marciano. That's what these guys are after.”
On that one thing we can all agree: These are not standard guys. But what either of them was after on stage Thursday was anyone’s guess.
So let’s focus on Saturday, shall we? Lopez, 22-1 (13 KOs), has been a laser beam of brilliance in the ring when focused. But his upset of Vasiliy Lomachenko to swipe the unified lightweight championship is now more than five years old. Wins over all of the Sandor Martins and Steve Claggetts in the world can’t uphold the legacy Lopez seems to believe still is as active as it ever was. But last May’s unanimous decision over Arnold Barboza Jnr was a step in the right direction, and a convincing win over the gifted Stevenson would make his case open-and-shut.
Stevenson, taking aim at a title in a fourth division, nevertheless finds himself in a situation similar to that of Lopez: with plenty to prove. Despite his 24-0 (11 KOs) record, Stevenson still lacks a signature win – the closest things being a 2021 stoppage of Jamel Herring and a 2022 points win over Oscar Valdez. A triumph over Lopez would be one worth stamping on his boxing passport.
Does the animosity between the fighters – if whatever bizarre ritual we witnessed can be described as such – add anything special to the tank for Stevenson?
“Nah, it ain’t nothing personal. It’s all business,” Stevenson said. “When it gets personal is when people get all emotional, so I ain’t even taking it that way. I’m 100 percent focused, I’m ready, and Saturday night he gonna see.”
Lopez, in the midst of his goofy on-stage reverie, stumbled across one sane thought:
“Yo, can it be Saturday already?” he asked, seemingly of no one in particular. “Let it be Saturday already!”
Please, Saturday, in the name of everything that’s holy, you can’t get here fast enough.
Jason Langendorf is the former Boxing Editor of ESPN.com, was a contributor to Ringside Seat and the Queensberry Rules, and has written about boxing for Vice, The Guardian, Sun-Times and other publications. A member of the Boxing Writers Association of America, he can be found at LinkedIn and followed on X and Bluesky.
