By Steve Kim
During his highly impressive dismantling of William Silva on July 14th in New Orleans, Teofimo Lopez suffered an injury to his right hand. It kept him from returning the ring in September and today he was given the green light to resume his training.
Lopez (10-0, 8 KO's) told BoxingScene.com on Monday afternoon - "I just got cleared by Dr. Shin, himself, I will be training full blast today if I want to. My right hand is good to go. He told me that I'm looking healthy and there's nothing wrong, my recovery is only two months but it looks it's been three months and that everything is healed, I'm ready to go."
The plan is for Lopez to return on December 8th in New York on a card that will be televised by Top Rank.
Lopez, who has a particular passion for the sport was anxious to get back to work in the gym,
"I was still running here and there but boxing wise, yeah, I was itching for it and yeah, I'm happy now," he admitted. "It's a great week to start, it's Monday and we have a whole week to start training fresh. I was antsy, I'm not going to lie. But now we're back, we're back in business."
As for who he'd like to face in his return, Lopez stated - "The best available opponent, absolutely. I definitely want it to be a title eliminator. I was thinking why not - if they move (Vasyl) Lomachenko to the December 8th card - a Ray Beltran fight?
"But we'll see what happens, we got the matchmakers, Brad Goodman and Bruce Trampler, they know what they're doing and so does Top Rank. They know what they're doing with me. I know for a fact Bob Arum told me himself we would be opening on ESPN at Madison Square Garden, December 8th."
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.
