Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn and Teofimo Lopez shook on a deal on Thursday for a fight between Teo and Devin Haney in 2022 after they win their scheduled title defenses against George Kambosos Jr. and Joseph ‘Jojo’ Diaz Jr.
IBF/WBA/WBO lightweight champion Teofimo (16-0, 12 KOs) has the easy job of taking care of his IBF mandatory Kambosos Jr (19-0, 10 KOs) on November 27th in a Matchroom show on DAZN at Madison Square Garden in New York.
That should be a relative slam dunk win for Teofimo against Kambosos Jr, as long as the year-long layoff that Teo has had since his last fight against Vasily Lomachenko in October 2020 hasn’t taken something away from him.
WBC lightweight champion Haney (26-0, 15 KOs) has the much tougher job of defending his title against former IBF super featherweight champion ‘Jojo’ Diaz Jr. (32-1-1, 15 KOs) on December 4th on DAZN at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
There’s a very real possibility that Haney will lose to Jojo Diaz, especially if he starts getting nailed with headshots early on. Haney’s last opponent Jorge Linares had him close to being stopped last May.
If not for the clinching that Haney repeatedly did from the ninth through the twelfth round, Linares would have knocked him out.
Assuming Haney and Teofimo win their next fights, they’ll be meeting in 2022 for what should be an interesting match-up. For Teofimo, it’ll likely be the last one for him at 135 before he moves up to 140 permanently.
Eddie Hearn: “This is what’s going to happen,” said Hearn to Fighthub. “You’re going to best Kambosos, and then what we’re going to do is we’re going to go to Bob [Arum]. ‘Bob, we want to make this fight [Teofimo vs. Haney].'”
Teofimo Sr: “Bob said it was okay.”
Hearn: “If he [Arum] doesn’t want to pay for it, I’ll pay for it. There you go.”
Teofimo Sr: “Exactly. So you win twice, you win three times, you know? I wouldn’t have no say so.”
Teofimo Jr: “But ESPN will fight for it [Teofimo-Haney] too.”
Hearn: “They can have it. We can do it on both [DAZN and ESPN]. If it’s the right deal for everybody, we can do it on ESPN. We can put it on both, and if Bob doesn’t want to pay for it, I’ll pay for it. It’s a pleasure to have you on DAZN.”
Teofimo Sr: “You’re a man of your word. Do I only talk good things about this guy [Hearn] the whole interview? It’s been an honor that he’s a gentleman the whole time.”
Hearn: “I’ll offer this. While we’re giving each other compliments, I was looking at your son in the ring earlier and I thought to myself, ‘That’s the guy that beat Lomachenko.’ I feel like he should get a lot more praise for what he did because when he beat Richard Commey and they said, ‘Yeah, he’s going to fight Lomachenko.’ I said, ‘He ain’t going to fight Lomachenko.’ What a stupid decision because this kid’s a star and he just had a great win at MSG [against Commey]. They should build him and give him a couple of defenses and make that fight even bigger. Yet you had the balls to go and fight Lomachenko.”
Teofimo Jr: “I went home with 600,000 dollars.”
Hearn: “My heart bleeds for you.”
Teofimo Jr: “I live off a f***ing budget and you want to know why? Because that’s how the billionaires do it.”
Hearn: “You know what my dad told me? ‘Always live poor.'”
Teofimo Jr: “You got to live poor. That’s why I work my butt over here.”
Hearn: “You should have been the star of ESPN.”
Teofimo Sr: “Of course, we are.”
Hearn: “After that performance and what you achieved, you should be a superstar.”
Teofimo Jr: “I’ll say it like this, though. Like everything connects in this way. He’s [Hearn] a businessman and he knows what he wants and what he’s doing, Matchroom Boxing, he owns that, right? Takeover Promotions is coming in, right? We’ll talk in two years after by ESPN deal is up.”
Hearn: “One thing I’ll tell you about Takeover Promotions. It’s the same thing I’ll tell you about Devin Haney Promotions and the same thing I’ll tell you about Canelo Promotions. All these promotional companies. The one thing they don’t want to do is take any risks. That’s what bigger promoters do, and it’s a tough business. We’re talking about a risk on a show. There’s always a risk. So I tell Bill [Haney] and Devin, if this show loses a million dollars and you’re my co-promoter, you’re involved.”
We’ll see. It’s a good first step to putting the best of the best, in their prime, against one another.