SAN ANTONIO – Teofimo Lopez thinks Luke Campbell’s boxing ability can cause difficulty for Ryan Garcia at times Saturday night.
The unbeaten unified lightweight champion still suspects Garcia’s power will trump the British southpaw’s skills in their fight for the WBC interim 135-pound crown. From a business standpoint, Lopez (16-0, 12 KOs) wants Garcia to win because the 22-year-old contender is a popular American rival that the Brooklyn native eventually can fight.
“I think it’s a great matchup for both guys,” Lopez told BoxingScene.com recently. “And it’s crazy to say that because Luke Campbell is a veteran in the game, and Ryan Garcia is on his way up. But that’s the same thing they said about me – that I was on my way up. But we’re on a whole different level of skills, when it comes to me and Ryan. But I think it’s a great matchup. Luke Campbell has all the abilities to beat Ryan Garcia and, if not, frustrate him.
“My only thing, and that goes for everybody, is that since [Campbell is a] southpaw, the check hook is right there for Ryan all day. And Ryan’s very good at his short hooks, long hooks, awkward hooks, and I think that might change the whole momentum of the fight for Luke Campbell. And I think it may give Ryan Garcia the win. However, we want Ryan Garcia to win. We want him to do good. We want him to look great against Luke Campbell because it helps us.”
Even though Lopez is certain he is better than Garcia and Lomachenko proved his superiority over Campbell in August 2019, Lopez feels Garcia will play a role Saturday night similar to the one he occupied October 17 while beating Lomachenko in Lopez’s career-defining fight.
“A lot of these older guys, a good amount of them don’t got the heart,” Lopez said. “I went to Loma and I snatched his heart, like a little kid, and I said, ‘Give me your sh-t.’ And I took that motherf-cker’s heart and I ate it right in front of him. And he ain’t like it. You’ve gotta have heart. You’ve gotta have something and I don’t think Luke has that heart. That’s the thing that could give Ryan Garcia the knockout. I think he’ll frustrate Ryan, but there’s a high chance Ryan knocks him out.”
The 33-year-old Campbell (20-3, 16 KOs), of Hull, England, has not been knocked out during his seven-year pro career. The 2012 Olympic gold medalist has lost a 12-round unanimous decision to Ukraine’s Lomachenko (14-2, 10 KOs) and a pair of 12-round split decisions to Venezuela’s Jorge Linares (47-5, 29 KOs) and France’s Yvan Mendy (46-5-1, 22 KOs, 1 NC).
The 22-year-old Garcia, of Victorville, California, has knocked out 85 percent of his pro opponents (20-0, 17 KOs). In his past two fights, Garcia has recorded back-to-back first-round knockouts of the Philippines’ Romero Duno (22-2, 17 KOs) and Costa Rica’s Francisco Fonseca (27-3-2, 21 KOs).
DAZN will stream Campbell-Garcia as the main event of a five-fight show from American Airlines Center in Dallas (8 p.m. GMT; 3 p.m. EST; noon PST).
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
