By Steve Kim
There's no doubt that lightweight Teofimo Lopez (10-0, 8 KOs) is going places. After his most recent outing - an impressive sixth round knockout of William Silva on July 14th - many believe he is ready for a title shot sooner rather than later.
But he stated - "I'm not really in a rush but it's just that my skillset, the way I fight, I already know that it's going to move me that way."
During his in-studio visit to 'the 3 Knockdown Rule' with Mario Lopez, his father chimed in - "We're just not going to b a regular boxer, he's going to be a pay-per-view star."
"Absolutely, it's all entertainment, my dad told me one thing, I was 12, he said, 'You've got to be entertaining' and ever since that, I stuck with that throughout my career,'' said Lopez, who is an entertaining fighter with an abundance of charisma in and out of the ring.
The only person that has more confidence in his ability is his father, who added - "The reason why I'm telling you that we're going to be a pay-per-view star is because we're going to make these 135 guys look like nothing and I said before he fought William Silva - this guys going to be easy. They didn't believe me,'there's no way, Felix Verdejo had a hard time with him, what makes you think your son can do it? Felix Verdejo's in another league than your son.'"
In front of a national audience watching on ESPN, Lopez put on a show, stopping Silva in eye-opening fashion. Verdejo went the distance with Silva in 2016.
"Also, it was going into my tenth fight, Verdejo it was his 19th fight going into his 20th when he fought him," noted Lopez, who is nursing an injury to his right hand that will sideline him for a few months.
Currently the champions at lightweight are Vasyl Lomachenko (WBA), Mikey Garcia (WBC/IBF) and Ray Beltran (WBO).
"Again, the 135 weight division is going to be easy,'' the father insisted
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com