Ahead of Teofimo Lopez’s fight against WBO and The Ring light welterweight champion Josh Taylor on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, Lopez has taken the trash-talk to nuclear levels. After a heated press conference where the two were held back from an actual face-off, Lopez answered a question from a reporter in the most morbid way.
When the reporter asked Lopez what he thought about Josh Taylor saying that “he wants to send him into retirement,” Lopez went passively nuclear.
“And I want to hurt the man to where he aint breathing,” Lopez said.
The comment compounds a toxic fight hype between the Brooklyn slugger and the Scottish boxing champion. However, beyond the fight hype and shenanigans to sell tickets lies a dark side to boxing that Lopez has been exhibiting: depression.
In His Own Words
“You know why I say I’d kill this man?” Lopez asked during an interview with ESPN’s Mark Kriegel. “It’s ’cause I want to die, low-key.”
“What does that mean? Dying low key?” Kriegel responded, unaware of the slang term for an underlying statement.
“I want to die. At least if I die, I die doing what I love,” Lopez responded.
“You want to die?” Kriegel pressed.
“Yeah, but only in my ring, you know?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“I want to die in the ring,” Lopez repeated. “But, like, that’s a little feeling inside that I do want to have. No, not a fear. There’s no fear in me. Nah, the only person I fear –“
Lopez has had a rollercoaster career inside the ring and outside after defeating widely regarded former pound-for-pound favorite Vasiliy Lomachenko in 2020, to become the unified light boxing world champion. Then he started a family — marrying and having a son. All was well until it wasn’t.
His very next fight saw him take a split decision loss to George Kambosos Jr., and after all the fanfare regarding his supposed ascension after defeating Lomachenko, the hype was over. Then went his marriage, as Lopez claims to be getting divorced and fears a custody battle over his child. He moved up to the light welterweight division and scored two wins in a row, but neither came with the same cache of his earlier successes.
You Talk. We Listen.
Now Lopez fights the highly regarded and unbeaten Taylor for his WBO and The Ring titles, but instead is focused on his own demise.
“Everybody is scared of death, I don’t know why,” Lopez said from the dais during the final press conference. “Everybody is going to die, but at least if I die, I’ve done something that means something that will last forever.
“At the end of the day I’m ready to put on a show. We’re making history. Everybody can laugh and do whatever the f**k they want, but it’s just me and him.”
With fighters like Ryan Garcia being open about their bouts with depression and even former featherweight titlist and current lightweight contender from Southern California, Joseph “Jo Jo” Diaz, Jr. admitting he has struggled with alcoholism and other drugs for years, the time to listen closely to fighters when they say something alarming is now.
