Teofimo Lopez gets a unanimous decision win against Josh Taylor; first off, I would like to congratulate Lopez in this fight, I didn’t predict that he would win in this match, but he got the measure of Taylor in the second-half.
Taylor was effective in the early rounds; however, Lopez started to read Taylor’s attacks: Taylor was over-committing with the left-hand, frequently throwing looping shots and just getting too close for wide-punches. Lopez was counter-punching on the back-foot, anticipating Taylor’s sloppy offense and immediately countering with right-uppercuts or straight-punches.
I think Taylor should have focused on boxing from mid-range, and should have shortened his hooks, he was telegraphing his power punches and started to look more desperate: as mentioned previously, this worked to Lopez’ favour.
Lopez looked like the power-puncher in this fight, and clearly hurt Taylor in the last round; Taylor was very vulnerable to Lopez’ right uppercuts, and couldn’t seem to negate them. Lopez was almost controlling the ring very well, pivoting around Taylor’s lead-foot to negate Taylor’s left-hand.
Finally, where does Taylor go from here? Many believe that Taylor lost in his fight against Catterall (I also agree with this), it’s likely that a fight with Gervonta Davis has also fallen-through (Davis would likely prefer the fight with Lopez after this.); Taylor is demonstrably on the decline, and is not likely to be able to compete with up-coming talent in the division; needless to say, his days at the top are very much numbered.
