Josh Taylor Assures Us His Fight With Teófimo López Will End in a Knockout

Although there is still a long way to go before undefeated Scottish southpaw Josh Taylor, the WBO world super lightweight champion and American Teófimo López square off, things are already heating up with Taylor promising a knockout.

Taylor is undefeated in 19 fights, 13 of them concluding within the distance. After the rematch with Englishman Jack Catterall (26-1, 13 KOs) fell through, Taylor was ordered by the WBO to defend his belt against López (18-1, 13 KOs).

Taylor, 31 years old and born in Edinburgh, Scotland, defeated Catterall by split decision in February of last year in Glasgow. Although Taylor’s performance was dull, thanks to the judges he kept his status as the undisputed 140-pound champion.

Previously, in May 2021, Taylor took possession of the four belts with a unanimous decision win over American José Carlos Ramírez (27-1, 17 KOs) who ceded his WBC and WBO belts while Taylor retained his WBA and IBF belts.

After several postponements, the rematch between Taylor and Catterall was finally scheduled for March 4th. However, at the beginning of the year, the champion again requested a postponement, alleging that he had suffered a foot injury and it was impossible for him to properly train for the fight.

Consequently, there was a war of accusations between the two boxers and they even had an altercation where they were forcibly separated when they both attended the fights on January 21 in Manchester, England where Liam “Beefy” Smith (33-3-1, 20 KOs) knocked out British counterpart Chris Eubank Jr. (32-2, 23 KOs) in the fourth round.

According to an earlier notice from the WBO Championships Committee, the representatives of Taylor and López had until Saturday, February 25, to reach an agreement or otherwise a public auction would be held. Yesterday, Feb. 23, the disputants confirmed that they had reached an agreement with Top Rank to fight on June 10^th at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Commenting on the upcoming bout, Taylor stated, “It’s a huge fight and one that gives me that excitement and buzz. I don’t think it’ll go the distance, one of us will get knocked out.” Taylor acknowledged that the twenty-five-year-old López. A former lightweight unified world champion, is a great boxer despite poor performances in his last fights.

López shone in his first 16 professional fights until an upset loss to Australian George Kambosos (20-2, 10 KOs) at Madison Square Garden. That night of November 27, 2021, López -with a performance far from the convincing victory he won unanimously against Vasily Lomachenko — Teofimo gave up the IBF, WBA and WBO 135-pound belts in a split decision loss.

From there, López jumped to 140 pounds where he has had a couple of fights. In the first, in August of last year, he defeated Mexican Pedro “The Rock” Campa by knockout in the seventh round in Las Vegas, winning the vacant WBO International belt and the corresponding NABF belt.

Four months later, in December, López left his fans unsatisfied with a lackluster victory against Spaniard Sandor Martín whom he beat by 10-round split decision at Madison Square Garden. Although López was knocked down in the second round, he received scores of 96-93, 97-92 and 94-95.

Article submitted by Jorge Juan Alvarez in Spanish

Please note any adjustments made were for clarification purposes and any errors were unintentional.

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