By Ryan Burton

Rising lightweight contender Teofimo Lopez (12-0) returns to the ring Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in New York against Edis Tetli (31-2). The fight is part of the 4 bout ESPN pay-per-view telecast that is headlined by WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford defending his title against former champion Amir Khan.

The fight that Lopez really wants is against Vasiliy Lomachenko who retained his WBA and WBO lightweight titles with a brutal knockout of Anthony Crolla Saturday night in Los Angeles.

The ever confident Lopez doesn’t believe Lomachenko will be a champion for very much longer.

“Those are my titles. What he is doing right now is he is borrowing them,” Lopez recently told BoxingScene.com.  “He knows it too. He said he will fight us when we get a world title so that is what we are doing, getting a world title.”

Lopez was on hand for Lomachenko’s 4 round destruction of Crolla, but like the Ukrainian’s previous fight against Jose Pedraza, Lopez didn’t pay attention to the fight. He still maintains that Lomachenko isn’t starting to show slippage.

“I didn’t watch (the Pedraza) fight but I saw his face (afterwards). What it told me is that it is catching up to him. All that shit is catching up to him. Listen man, our body can only take so much. He already has what, 400 and something fights in total? That’s without all the sparring. That shit all adds up. Trust me. Even though he is still young - 30 something is still young - but not the way he is looking. He is already getting injured bad,” Lopez revealed.

Lomachenko isn’t the biggest lightweight around and Lopez believed that he may actually move back in weight instead of face him.

Lopez was recently turned down by Pedraza and expects it to continue to be tough getting fights moving forward.

“A lot of these guys are going to say that. They are not going to want to fight me. I will be surprised if Loma wants to fight me when I get a world title. Don’t be surprised if he goes back down to 130 straight up,” said Lopez.

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