Teofimo Lopez (18-1, 13 KOs) beat the underdog Sandor Martin (40-3, 13 KOs) by an unpopular 10 round split decision on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in New York.
The judges’ scores:
- 97-92 – Teofimo
- 96-93 – Teofimo
- 95-94 – Sandor
After the fight, Teofimo blamed Martin for the fight not being interesting, saying that he was running the entire time. Teofimo seemed in denial about his poor performance and didn’t want to admit that Sandor outboxed him.
The ringside crowd was stone quiet after the scores were read, and it was pretty clear that they weren’t happy with the results of the fight giving Teofimo the victory.
“You was running the whole time,” said Teofimo to Sandor after the fight.
Sandor looked like the ring general in most of the round and knocked Teofimo down in the second. In the seventh, Sandor knocked Teo down again with a right hook that bounced off the top of his head as he was charging forward.
The referee blew the call, but even if he had gotten it right, the scores were so broad in favor of Teofimo that it wouldn’t have changed the result.
In the first round, Sandor suffered a broken nose from a clash of heads with Teofimo. Interestingly, after the fight, Teo tried to convince Sandor that his broken nose resulted from his punches rather than from a headbutt. Everyone watching the fight saw that Sandor’s nose was damaged after the clash of heads with Teofimo in round one.
Teofimo was initially aggressive in the first round, but after getting dropped in the second round by Sandor, he became cautious and unwilling to attack.
Sandor was angry about the results, feeling that he’d done more than enough to earn the decision. He was second-guessing himself, saying that maybe he needed to fight with more urgency.
In hindsight, Sandor needed to press more because he was facing a popular fighter that is one of Top Rank’s stars.
He was never going to be given a decision over an A-side guy like Teofimo unless he totally dominated him, which he failed to do. Although Sandor did appear to win by two or three rounds, that wasn’t enough to beat a popular guy like Teofimo.
In an interview with ESPN, Sandor predicted that Teofimo will get torn apart by WBC 140-lb champion Regis Prograis if he faces him.
