Teofimo Lopez says he was impressed with the performance of Jamaine Ortiz (16-1-1, 8 KOs) on Saturday night despite him losing by a 12 round unanimous decision against Vasyl Lomachenko (17-2, 11 KOs) at Madison Square Garden in New York.
The former unified lightweight champion Teofimo suspects that the 26-year-old Jamaine studied his victory over the 34-year-old Lomachenko and used it as a blueprint to give him problems tonight.
When Teofimo was asked if the “the fix was in” by an interviewer, he pointed out that the media are already talking about Lomachenko and Devin Haney happening next.
Teofimo claimed that it’s about “business,” which could suggest to some that he feels Jamaine should have won the fight instead of Loma.
“I was impressed by Ortiz, really. They must have studied my film of me facing Lomachenko for a while,” said Teofimo Lopez to Fight Hub TV, reacting to Vasyl Lomachenko’s win over Jamaine Ortiz.
“He did good up to a point, but it’s the later rounds that you mostly have to focus on with Lomachenko.
“But overall, Jamaine Ortiz is seasoned enough to give everybody else a bigger and better fight as well.
It’s hard to make an argument that Jamaine deserved the victory tonight because of the way he faded during the last half of the contest, allowing Lomachenko to pull out the win by the scores 116-112, 117-111, and 115-113.
If Jamaine had kept the momentum that he had in the first four rounds, he would have won the fight because he looked great during that portion of the contest.
The only round that Ortiz appeared to win in the last half was the eighth, but Lomachenko turned it up in the ninth round. In the end, Ortiz looked like he didn’t have the conditioning to fight 12 hard rounds.
The same thing happened to Jamaine in his eight round draw against Joseph Adorno last year. Jamaine gassed out in the second half of the fight.
If Lomachenko possessed the punching power of Adorno, he likely would have stopped Ortiz tonight because he looked hurt on several occasions.
“All I know is it’s all about business, and they’re talking about Haney and Loma right now. I don’t want to say the judges or anything like that. I do want to say is if it makes money, it makes sense,” said Teofimo.
