“You got an alert? I made it that big? Oh s—,” exclaims 21-year-old Teofimo Lopez after being told that his highlight reel knockout of Mason Menard and Heisman Trophy-inspired celebration — complete with Kyler Murray jersey — that followed was blasted out by ESPN to mobile devices across the country back in December.
First round KO ✔️
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) December 9, 2018
Backflip celebration ✔️
Strike the Heisman pose ✔️
Teofimo Lopez IS NASTY. pic.twitter.com/7cnROpk7Yv
A smile stretches across his face as we converse at the City Boxing Club in Las Vegas. For a moment you forget that Lopez (11-0, 9 KOs) is one of the most highly-regarded prospects in all of boxing and realize that he also is — for all intents and purposes — still a kid at heart. Some of the biggest names in boxing have never made the SportsCenter Top 10 plays. And here is Lopez, barely above legal drinking age, cracking the list.
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So, for a moment, Lopez decides to let his inner child relish in the fact that he’s not only gone viral, but had his victory and celebration on "SportsCenter."
“It’s not about winning that sets you apart, it’s how you win,” says Lopez, who will face Diego Magdaleno (31-2, 13 KOs) on Saturday at the Ford Center in Frisco, Texas on ESPN+. “I’m honestly killing the game right now. But that’s off of entertainment. How do you bring more people into boxing? You have to do something different. The fans want entertainment. Don’t go out there and look pretty and win. They won’t want to see you again. It’s boring.”
This isn’t the first time that Lopez has connected with people who may not be boxing fans.
Last May, Lopez stopped Vitor Jones Freitas in just over a minute. The knockout was special, but the celebration is what went viral.
😲KO + Fortnite Dance + Backflip. The disrespect...
— Michael Benson (@MichaelBensonn) May 12, 2018
🚂All aboard the Teofimo Lopez hype train! #LinaresLoma pic.twitter.com/xOly5I4TmT
Yup, that’s Lopez doing the Fortnite dance. Social media was lit up by kids, who may have zero interest in boxing, sharing Lopez’s victory dance.
“We brought all the gamers and young kids into the boxing world with the Fortnite dance,” he beams.
Lopez has an understanding of how to connect with audiences outside of the hardcore boxing fan. And if the 135-pounder has his way, he’ll have the world in the palm of his hand soon enough.
When Lopez arrived at City Boxing, he made it a point to greet everyone at the gym. After apologizing for being a few minutes late, Lopez high-fives some kids training. He dances to the music playing in the gym before spotting a teenager shadowboxing in the makeshift ring. Lopez takes a few moments to offer pointers on footwork and how to properly sit on punches. After that, Lopez offers advice to a muscular 20-something and suggests that he shouldn’t wear a breathing mask because it doesn’t properly emulate how to control your breath in a fight.
Although he can be braggadocios, Lopez maintains a certain level of maturity that won’t allow himself to get caught up in his own hype. If that job belongs to anybody, it would be his father, who is also his trainer.
“He was a showoff from the very beginning,” Teofimo Lopez Sr. boasts. “My son is doing s— nobody has ever done in 11 fights. Nobody even knew who Floyd Mayweather was after his 11th fight. My son is f—— amazing!”
There’s no shortage of swagger from Lopez Sr. And it’s certainly where Junior gets his penchant for entertainment from.
And that all started at a young age.
Once upon a time, Teofimo Lopez Sr. had dreams of becoming a boxer as he stomped around the concrete confines of Brooklyn, New York. But with a new child to take care of, he couldn’t invest in himself full-time and picked up a job as a limousine driver, while his wife maintained as a bartender. Nevertheless, he trained in hopes of one day landing a fight. Everything changed one day when he pulled up to a boxing gym in Florida.
A 6-year-old Teofimo Lopez Jr. waited as his father toured the gym. A coach saw the little Lopez milling about and asked him to put on a pair of gloves to hit the mitts. It didn’t take long for the coach to realize that the kid had something special.
“By the time my dad came back, I had already learned two or three combinations,” Lopez says. “That’s when my father knew. He was in his 30s and realized it was too late for his dream. He started investing in my career.”
With his father taking the reigns as his trainer, Lopez began competing and piled up notoriety with his flashy style and technical prowess.
“When he started competing as an 8-year-old, I always looked at the crowd,” his father says while putting the mitts on. “Nobody was on their phones and their eyes were on Teofimo. I would tell my son to look at the crowd, they are watching him. Everybody wants to see him fight.”
Father and son begin mitt work, while Lopez Sr. continues to boast about his son’s ability. He stops in the middle of the combination as if this writer needed more convincing.
“What am I supposed to do? Lie to people? This kid is the golden child,” he says.
Father and son. @TeofimoLopez and his pops/trainer working the mitts last week. Story arriving tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/y2wv3gAgKm
— Andreas Hale (@AndreasHale) February 1, 2019
His father’s incessant praise has actually helped Lopez deal with the concept of weighty expectations as he continues his rise through the pro ranks.
“I’ve dealt with this pressure since I was eight years old with my dad talking me up about becoming a future world champ,” Lopez says while hitting the heavy bag. “It sounds like just a proud father talking about his son, but it’s showing with my skill in the ring. My father always knew.
“If he wasn’t my father and he was just a coach, people would believe him,” he continues after his father drifts off into another conversation with a boxer. “It’s just that my dad is very honest about what he sees. He tells me when I look bad. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. But we communicate well. I have so much respect for him. We’ve been at it for 16 years.”
From Brooklyn to Davie, Florida, Lopez Sr. did his best to keep his son in line. The budding boxing start didn’t get into many dustups as a kid.
“I knew what I could do if I wanted to,” Lopez says with a grin. “I didn’t want to endanger anybody’s life.”
But he did fall in with the wrong crowd. At the first sign of trouble, Lopez Sr. yanked his son out of school in ninth grade and decided to have him homeschooled.
“He saved me by taking me out of a bad situation,” Lopez says. “I got to learn about myself being alone in home school. I didn’t really have any friends because I was training when I wasn’t in home school. I probably would have been working somewhere else if he didn’t do that for me. I definitely wouldn’t have been doing this. Not with the people that I had around me. I appreciate my dad for that.”
The discipline helped Lopez amass an impressive amateur record and an opportunity to compete in the Olympics for the United States. However, due to shifty politics ,Lopez wasn’t granted a spot on the 2016 U.S. boxing team despite winning the Olympic trials. He would have to fight for the Honduras team (his parents' birthplace) in order to make an attempt at an Olympic medal.
The well-documented corrupt judging swept Lopez up as he lost in the first round to France’s Sofiane Oumiha. As expected, Lopez was heartbroken. But that setback only lit a fire under the talented fighter, who decided to move to Las Vegas, sign with Top Rank shortly after the games and make his professional debut in November of 2016.
It’s been fireworks and viral highights ever since.
“I’m not upset anymore,” he says. “My success speaks for itself. I won the Olympic trials and wasn’t given the opportunity to fight for this country because of the political things that they allowed to happen by giving my spot to somebody that didn’t even earn it.”
The silver lining in turning pro was that Lopez could let his personality shine and no opponent would benefit from protective headgear.
“I’m glad I’m in the pros now because I feel at home,” he says. “I used to showboat a lot when I was younger. I had to stop because the judges didn’t like me. From 14 to 19 I had to hold the entertainment back. But now? I feel free. They can’t tell me s—.”
Lopez may be the co-main event to the highly-anticipated rematch between Eleider Alvarez and Sergey Kovalev, but he promises that he’ll be the one everyone talks about once the night is over.
“I’m going to steal the show,” he proclaims. “It’s the takeover. In 2019 I am going to be ruthless. We don’t feel bad upstaging the main event. They can be the main event, but I’m going to be the main attraction. Look, I’m your favorite fighter’s favorite fighter!”
Just left the gym after speaking with @TeofimoLopez ahead of his February 2nd showdown with Diego Magdaleno. Fair warning: his next post fight celebration is going viral. pic.twitter.com/DoOv3JerRl
— Andreas Hale (@AndreasHale) January 25, 2019
As for the celebration, he already has that planned and it’s inspired by Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown.
Should he get past Magdaleno, Lopez has another date set for April 20th on the undercard of Terence Crawford and Amir Khan’s pay-per-view clash. After that, he hopes to line up a title shot before the end of the year. Although he doesn’t care who it is, his father has one name in mind.
And that’s the current pound-for-pound king of boxing and unified lightweight world champion, Vasiliy Lomachenko.
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“Put whoever you want in front of my son and he’s going to dissect and kill them,” Lopez Sr. exclaims. “I see him destroying Lomachenko in the first round because he’s too small. My son is going to wreck him.”
The 21-year-old won’t get that far ahead of himself and states that his focus is squarely on his clash with Magdaleno. No matter how many likes he gets on social media, Lopez is keenly aware that he has to not allow it to get to his head. For the most part, he stays off of social media, which is why he wasn’t aware of making the SportsCenter Top 10 plays. The hype he’ll leave to his father, but the work is all on his shoulders.
“Anybody can get the spotlight,” he says. “But it’s not about who gets it, it’s about who keeps it. That’s what sets you apart. Floyd knew how to keep it. He became a billion-dollar athlete because he had his mind set to never get comfortable inside of the ring and he knew how to entertain outside of it.”
Teofimo Lopez wants to be remembered beyond what happens inside of the squared circle. And with the right combination, he can be boxing’s next mainstream star.”
“The one thing my father told me is that you always have to entertain,” he says. “Boxing is temporary. My legacy is forever. Who are you outside of boxing? That’s what is important.”
