Teofimo Lopez backing Isaac Cruz to take advantage of Rolly Romero’s back injury
Former undisputed lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez claims no one wants to fight him at 140 lbs after his dominant performance over Josh Taylor last year.
Brooklyn boxer Lopez fights Jermaine Ortiz this Saturday in Las Vegas, defending the WBO world super-lightweight title he snatched from unbeaten, and former undisputed champion, Taylor.
But while Lopez’s eyes are firmly fixed on his next opponent, the 26-year-old was asked about an upcoming fight in his division between Rolly Romero and Isaac Cruz on March 30.
On Boxing Social, Lopez revealed: “Romero is coming off a really bad back injury, and he has a lot of problems there – it’s time to expose everybody, f**k ’em.
“Maybe Pitbull can take advantage of that when they fight.”
While the super-lightweight division remains one of the most mouthwatering at world level, Lopez complains that he is still struggling when it comes to finding opponents.
He said: “Everyone’s coming to 140lbs because Teo axed out the big king that was Josh Taylor.
“But no one wants to fight me. I just found out that [Subriel Matias] is going to fight in June or July against Liam Paro. Didn’t he ask for me after this fight? Ya’ll can’t be that blind, nobody wanna fight Teofimo at this time.”
With the Matias fight, for now, out of the equation, unifications in boxing’s hottest division are looking more scarce, as talks of Lopez fighting Devin Haney – the WBC world champion – have also gone silent.
While Lopez could face the winner of Romero vs Cruz – unifying the WBO and WBA straps – the fact that they are on the other side of the pond, so to speak – with PBC – means that there is perhaps more than one hurdle in the way of these blockbuster fights getting made.