Don’t let the goofball theatrics or any of Teofimo Lopez Jr’s attempts to get inside Shakur Stevenson’s head this week distract you from the fact that Saturday’s junior welterweight showdown is a showcase of everything that’s right about the sport of boxing.
Lopez (22-1, 13 KOs) will defend WBO 140-pound title against the three-division champion Stevenson (24-0, 11 KOs) inside a sold-out Madison Square Garden in New York (DAZN PPV, 6 p.m. ET) in the main event of a must-see “Ring 6” card presented by Turki Alalshikh. This sizzling matchup between two of the top 10 pound-for-pound fighters on the planet has also featured no love lost between the two competitors.
A native of Brooklyn, New York, who now fights out of Las Vegas, the 28-year-old Lopez spent most of Thursday’s final press conference clowning Stevenson with childish verbiage in an attempt to get inside his head. It was par for the course for Lopez, who has longed relied upon mental warfare to convince opponents and critics that he’s unfocused or mentally unfit before delivering the kind of breakthrough performances — often as a betting underdog, which he is once again on Saturday — that his legacy has been built upon.
Despite his glossy record, Lopez can be wildly inconsistent inside the ring, especially when facing opponents not up to his level. But it has been his ability to step up his game when the lights are the brightest, including victories over lineal champions Vasily Lomachenko at lightweight (2020) and Josh Taylor at junior welterweight (2023), that have made the athletic counterpuncher so dangerous.
In a rare moment of clarity on Thursday, Lopez talked openly about how important the addition of new trainer Stacy McKinley, who will assist his father, Teofimo Lopez Sr., in the corner, was to his camp.
“No media, no documentaries this time around. No cameras, no people,” Lopez said. “I tried to change that around this time just to see how it would do and I kid you not, so much more work has been done. I’ve been switching things around. I feel very good, excited and determined. I can’t wait to display it Saturday night.”
The 28-year-old Stevenson, a native of nearby Newark, New Jersey, who now fights out of Houston, took Lopez’s antics in stride, save for a crass comment that Stevenson inadvertently interpreted as a joke about his mother caused him to get out of his seat and attempt to attack Lopez on the dais until security intervened. Stevenson, however, brought his own ammunition to the event in the form of a brown-bag bottle of alcohol meant as a gift to Lopez’s father, who was absent at the press conference, in reference to members of Stevenson’s team claiming to have seen him inebriated the night before in the hotel lobby.
“No, it ain’t nothing personal, it’s all business,” Stevenson said. “When it gets personal, it’s when people get emotional and I haven’t really felt that way. I’m 100% focused, I’m ready and Saturday night he’s going to see.
“Make sure you all tune in because I’m going to beat this boy’s ass.”
Despite winning a silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and then claiming world titles between 126 and 135 pounds, Stevenson found himself heavily criticized in recent years for boring performances as the biggest names in his divisions continued to avoid him. The narrative appeared to swing back in Stevenson’s favor last July when he stood in the pocket against unbeaten William Zepeda and scored an exciting and wide decision win.
Not only will the winner of Lopez-Stevenson likely find themselves catapulted into a crowded top five of the P4P rankings, he will also be in the driver’s seat for any number of big fights involving boxing’s biggest names between 135 and 147 pounds.
Fight card, odds
Odds via DraftKings Sportsbook
- Shakur Stevenson -300 vs. Teofimo Lopez (c) +230, WBO and Ring junior welterweight title
- Keyshawn Davis -700 vs. Jamaine Ortiz +450, junior welterweights
- Bruce Carrington (c) -800 vs. Carlos Castro +500, WBC featherweight title
Where to watch Lopez vs. Stevenson
- Date: Saturday, Jan. 31 | Location: Madison Square Garden — New York
- Start time: 6 p.m. ET
- Where to watch: DAZN PPV | Price: $69.99
Prediction
With advantages in speed, footwork and technique, it’s understandable why the southpaw Stevenson, who has been viewed for years as a future P4P king in waiting, is a 3-to-1 betting favorite coming in. That doesn’t mean, however, that the result of this fight is a foregone conclusion.
For as much as Stevenson has been brilliant to date in outclassing the biggest names he has shared the ring with, he has yet to fight an opponent of Lopez’s size, experience or athleticism as a quick-twitch puncher with legitimate pop. Stevenson is also moving up in weight to a fourth division against an unorthodox and explosive opponent who is anything but slow and plodding.
The big question will become whether Stevenson can have success in boxing Lopez from the outside or whether he will field the pressure — similar to the Zepeda fight — of being expected to be exciting. Lopez, due to the threat of his leaping counter shots, can often lower the output of his opponents, which can make rounds more difficult to score for ringside judges due to the lack of compelling shots landed.
Either way it goes, this matchup brings together two of the most skilled and physically gifted fighters of this era, similar to how we now view, in retrospect, Lopez’s 2020 victory over Lomachenko. The difference between the southpaw Lomachenko, who was giving up size to Lopez, and Stevenson, however, is that Stevenson throws much more volume and likely won’t wait until the midpoint of the fight to start making adjustments, which was what ultimately hurt Lomachenko when he ran out of time after rallying back.
While few boxers in history can claim to be as unique and dynamic as Lomachenko, Stevenson might be in a class of his own from the standpoint of a pure and complete boxer and the closest boxing has seen to follow in the lineage of great thinkers and technicians like Floyd Mayweather, Andre Ward and Terence Crawford. And it’s pure boxing that remains the only part of Lopez’s game, especially when he abandons his jab, that sometimes allows inferior opponents to hang with him on the scorecards.
Even with Lopez’s advantage in power, Stevenson will likely prove to be too skilled to find himself in any trouble and too smart to get lured into any attempts at short-range trading that might favor Lopez. Stevenson, like Lopez, is the type of boxer who looks and performs better when he’s facing elite and dangerous competition.
The biggest difference, however, is that Stevenson is more complete.
Pick: Stevenson via UD12
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