Promoter Bob Arum reveals he is working on a deal for Teofimo Lopez to face Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis on March 1, 2025 in a joint PPV on DAZN and ESPN.
Arum’s plan
Lance Pugmire @pugboxing reports that Top Rank boss Arum is negotiating the fight for Teofimo (21-1, 13 KOs) to move up to welterweight to challenge ‘Boots’ Ennis (33-0, 29 KOs) for his IBF 147 -lb belt . It is doubtful whether the match will be completed.
Teofimo recently gushed about being “King of the 140-lb division” and offers Devin Haney and Ryan Garcia a 55-45 split. The silence was deafening and nothing came back.
If Arum offers a similar deal to Boots Ennis, it will be interesting to see if he accepts. His career isn’t looking too good after recent back-to-back miserable performances for Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing.
A desperate move for Teofimo
From Top Rank’s perspective, it’s understandable why they let Teofimo walk the plank for this risky fight; his career has gone belly up. They need to do something with Lopez because things look desperate. He deserves losses to Jamaine Ortiz and Sandor Martin to follow his loss to George Kambosos. He looks shot.
If they don’t put Teofimo in with Boots, he’ll likely lose to one of these unnamed fringe contenders they keep matching him against.
This would be the first major fight for two-division world champion Lopez, 27, since his victory over Vasily Lomachenko on October 17, 2020. It’s been four years since Teofimo upset Lomachenko with a 12-round unanimous decision, and these are the lackluster matches he’s had since:
– Steve Claggett
– Jamaine Ortiz
– Josh Taylor
– Sandor Martin
– Pedro Campa
– George Kambosos Jr
None of those six fights resonated with the boxing public, and Lopez has seen his once-skyrocketing popularity decline to the point where he’s largely irrelevant. Teofimo is seen by fans as a strange character who sounds garbled in interviews and inconsistent in his performances. He fights as if he no longer has any senses.
Is Ennis a bust?
If Ennis is anything like what he did in his last fight against Karen Chukhadzhian on November 9, Teofimo has an excellent chance to beat him because he gets hit too much. Karen made Boots look like a novice, schooling him for nine rounds before he passed out.
Hearn will likely pursue the idea of matching Ennis against Lopez because that might be as good as it gets for him before his contract expires. He must regret signing Boots because he has been missing in his two fights for Hearn against Chukhadzhian and David Avanesyan. If Ennis loses, at least it will be against a name fighter.
Boots made matters worse by choosing not to accept the offer to fight Vergil Ortiz Jr. for his WBC interim 154-lb title on the massive February 22 card in Riyadh. That move showed Ennis’ lack of ambition and ability to take risks.