Teofimo Lopez and Devin Haney combined hold all of the belts at lightweight — however you choose to look at the WBC situation — and the two were both in Fresno tonight at Matchroom’s Mikey Garcia-Sandor Martin event.
Earlier in the evening, Haney and promoter Eddie Hearn made a bold challenge for Joseph Diaz Jr to accept an offer to fight in early December, with Diaz now needing an opponent with his Nov. 27 date with Ryan Garcia scrapped.
Lopez was in town perhaps mainly to meet up with Hearn while the Matchroom boss is in the United States, as Matchroom will now be promoting Lopez’s fight with George Kambosos Jr, likely taking that Nov. 27 date on DAZN.
Of course, Lopez and Haney were destined to cross paths, and they did. DAZN cameras captured a bit of it. There really isn’t much to it, but people seem to love this sort of thing:
Lopez (16-0, 12 KO) has seen a year of his career sit still following his huge win over Vasiliy Lomachenko, as the fight promotion with Kambosos has been an absolute disaster, though it should get done finally as Matchroom are a real boxing promotional company who know how to put on events that don’t feature YouTubers or grandpas.
Haney (26-0, 15 KO) really needs Diaz to accept the December fight, honestly, as there’s just not much actually available to him at that time otherwise.
In all reality, it does seem like if Lopez-Haney is going to happen, it will probably be down the line and north at 140 lbs. Lopez may well move up to 140 and chase undisputed champion Josh Taylor after the Kambosos fight, so long as he wins as expected.
But if nothing else, Matchroom get a little attention for both guys. They promote Haney, of course, and while they’re not promoting Lopez beyond that Kambosos fight, they’d love to get Lopez-Haney done for next year if Teofimo does stay at 135 even just for one more fight.