They test each other like any father-son duo would. They test each other, because in many ways, they are like two similar magnets merging. They tend to repel one another. The difference with this father-son duo is one gets walloped in the face for a living, and the other throws himself in the depths of depression when his son loses. That’s what former two-division world champion Teofimo Lopez Jr. and his father/trainer, Teofimo Lopez Sr., confronted after Lopez Jr. lost the WBO super lightweight belt to Shakur Stevenson on Jan. 31, in front of a packed Madison Square Garden.
Lopez Jr. remembers sitting there in his corner late in the Stevenson fight, paralyzed by a numbing blur, hoping his father would blurt out some form of instruction instead of talking him down with everything he was doing wrong.
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“I felt the more I was succeeding, the more I was losing my father; there is a give-and-take and there has to be some balance, and we didn’t have that in our last camp for the Stevenson fight,” Lopez Jr. told Uncrowned in an exclusive interview. “I lost [to Stevenson] before I even stepped through those ropes. I’ll regroup. We’ll regroup again for this fight.”
The fight this Saturday night is against WBA welterweight world champion Rolando “Rolly” Romero (17-2, 13 KOs) at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on a PBC pay-per-view broadcast (8 p.m. ET).
Teofimo Lopez (right) challenges for Rolly Romero’s WBA welterweight title this Saturday.
(Melina Pizano via Getty Images)
This is a crossroads fight, a much bigger crossroads fight for Lopez (22-2, 13 KOs) than it is for Romero, who will be competing for the first time since his upset victory over Ryan Garcia in May 2025. Lopez and Romero are close friends, and neither initially wanted the fight, but they both realize boxing is a business. The pair sparred four times in the past, the last time coming in October 2018.
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This time, it won’t be a friendly sparring session. This time, the two are fighting for relevance.
And Lopez is in more dire channels than his buddy Romero, unable to afford another loss this year. It makes Lopez much more dangerous. “The Takeover” knows what it is like to be on top of the boxing world and craves to be back on top again. Beating Romero will help in that process.
“I do need this more than Rolly,” Lopez Jr. admitted. “The best must fight the best, and even friends can fight one another. I am angry at myself [after the Stevenson fight]. I know I could have done more. I know I should have done more. But I was never right going into that fight. Mentally, right now, I feel focused, the kind of focus and determination that I felt in 2019.”
Lopez Jr. said he has not watched a second of the Stevenson fight. He said he does not care about watching it, because he lived it. He said he felt physically ready for Stevenson, but trying to stay at 140 pounds was taking a toll on him and what transpired inside his camp stymied him. He did not completely trust what unfolded with his trainer, who also happens to be his father.
Teofimo Lopez lost handily to Shakur Stevenson in their January title bout.
(Ishika Samant via Getty Images)
“I thought about canceling the [Stevenson] fight, because my father, who I dearly love, just wasn’t there, something was off, and it showed up that night in the fight,” Lopez Jr. said. “My father just wasn’t there like he usually is. It was a humbling experience for him. He had to understand what he did. We were not connecting. We are now. We had to talk some things out. It was not a good training camp [for Stevenson] at all, especially for everything I was putting on the line against someone like Shakur, who doesn’t make fights exciting. I can’t second-guess my intuition this time around.
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“The last two weeks of the Stevenson training camp, my father was doing things he was not supposed to be doing, and he [couldn’t] have cared less. That bothered me. He thought the fight was already won. That experience taught me to trust my intuition, knowing something was wrong here, trusting something was wrong here and doing something about it. There is nothing wrong with making sure everyone is on the same page. I was frustrated about everything. I worked so hard for everything — and we just gave it away. We should have canceled that fight.”
Lopez Sr. admitted the camp was a mess — and took accountability.
“Everything that happened, it’s all my fault,” he told Uncrowned. “I should have been more aware of things. We were on the same page when we fought [Vasiliy] Lomachenko. My son will be on top again. That [Stevenson] loss was my loss. I messed up. This thing only works when we are together, and I blame myself for everything that happened. I should have given him better instructions. Sometimes you make mistakes because you learn from those mistakes.
“It bothers me, because I know — everyone in boxing knows — my son is better than what he looked like that night [against Stevenson]. No one will break my bond with my son. We will get back with this [Romero] fight. The training camp was a bad environment. We came back before. We are again.”
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Lopez Jr. is expecting his second child, a daughter, two weeks after the Romero fight. With the expectance of another child, and with much at risk in Saturday’s fight, Lopez Jr. said he has been far more assertive during this training camp than he was the last. He said he was back in the gym the day after the Stevenson fight.
“I’m taking more control of the fight plan and my training camp, it’s everything about what the fighters is best at, and I do not want to overtrain and leave everything in the gym,” Lopez Jr. said. “Stylistically, I think Shakur is the best fighter I never fought. I dealt with the aftermath. I didn’t underestimate Shakur. My father and I call ourselves the ‘dynamic duo’ for a reason, but we cannot be the dynamic duo unless we are working together. That night against Stevenson, that training camp, we weren’t working together. You saw what happened.”
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Lopez Jr. said he respects Romero’s power. Lopez Jr. did bring back Milton McCrory, the former WBC welterweight champion, to his team. McCrory was one of Lopez Jr.’s first trainers. McCrory knows just how shifty Lopez Jr. can be when he is in boxing mode, as he was when Lopez tore apart Josh Taylor for the WBO welterweight title in 2023.
Lopez Jr. said he will not have a problem making weight, though he stops short in acknowledging if there is an advantage or not in knowing Romero so well.
“The way I see it, I’m facing a completely new fighter in this version of Rolly,” Lopez Jr. said. “I don’t even think his fight against Ryan Garcia was even as a fight. I watch that fight and see jabs, and jabs, and hooks. I’m proud that Rolly is on this path of spirituality. But I’m ready to kick his ass — not curse at him, and hug him afterward and tell him ‘thank you for taking the fight like the true champion I know you are.’ I have a baby girl coming, and that is more important than anything. Knowing I have another child coming, it’s forced me to mature more.
“As for Rolly and me, we’re just two fighters falling into our journey.”
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