Establish a strong enough baseline for toxic behavior and it gets harder and harder to surprise people. Teofimo Lopez Jnr, who has spent the last few months deliberately antagonizing other fighters with racist comments, again bullied his way into the spotlight at a Los Angeles-based media event for the May 2 “Fatal Fury” card in New York's Times Square. The act is wearing thin.

During a face-off with Arnold Barboza Jnr, his upcoming opponent, Lopez took umbrage to Barboza taking off his cowboy hat. The fighters exchanged shoves, then Lopez leapt forward and slapped Barboza hard across the face with his left hand. The smack echoed through the room.

Lopez’s aggression drew derision from DAZN commentator Sergio Mora (though mostly because Lopez struck with his open hand, unbecoming of a fighter in Mora’s view) and even from Ryan Garcia, also on the card and the only boxer who has dared to be even more violently racist than Lopez in the past 12 months.

“I don’t think you should do that shit,” Garcia said of the slap. Then, seconds later, host Todd Grisham asked him what he would have done had Lopez slapped him instead. “I would have fucking tried to kill him,” Garcia said, and both men laughed. That’s what kind of press conference this was.

Lopez spent the majority of his mic time trying to rile up the other participants on the card – first initiating a profane exchange with Barboza in which neither man’s insults could consistently be heard above the other’s. (Various lines such as “I’m gonna wipe your face with my ass” played on repeat.)

When other fighters slung barbs at each other, Lopez chimed in with “Got ‘em.” He brought what appeared to be a tall club that resembled an oversized cricket bat, called himself a “giant killer,” then added that he didn’t see Barboza as a giant. None of his rhetoric made particular sense. It was a look-at-me Twitter outburst manifested into physical reality.

Lopez insisted at the end of the Los Angeles event that, at 27 years old, he has yet to hit his prime. It might be true – Lopez is the former undisputed champion at 135lbs, is currently the lineal champion at 140lbs and has beaten Vasiliy Lomachenko more convincingly than anybody else. But his brand is aging poorly, or rotting into something entirely new and unappealing.

The unfortunate irony is that Lopez-Barboza requires little animosity to be compelling. Barboza is fresh off an upset win over Jack Catterall and may have the movement-heavy style to give Lopez fits. Mora and Chris Mannix spoke of the fight as possibly the most evenly matched on the card.

But Barboza, and particularly Lopez, did little to sell the fight on its merits. Barboza talked his share of trash, too, though it was difficult to look away from Lopez simply because he hardly ceased speaking.

“Teo fucking sucks, and I’m gonna beat the shit out of him,” Barboza concluded towards the end of the press conference.

Owen Lewis is a former intern at Defector media and writes and edits for BoxingScene. His beats are tennis, boxing, books, travel and anything else that satisfies his meager attention span. He is on Bluesky.