LAS VEGAS — George Kambosos Jr. scored the biggest upset of the year when he beat Teofimo Lopez last Saturday to capture the IBF, WBA (super), WBC "Franchise" and WBO lightweight titles. More often than not, the winner of a fight of this magnitude goes into hiding and is not to be heard from until their next bout is announced. Not Kambosos.
He embarked on a media tour in New York, the site of the Lopez win, and also made a stop in Miami to attend an NBA game. Now, the 28-year-old is in Las Vegas for Saturday's WBC title clash between Devin Haney and JoJo Diaz. Then, Kambosos will hop on a plane the following day for the Gervonta Davis-Isaac Cruz fight before he heads home, where he'll watch next Saturday's Vasiliy Lomachenko-Richard Commey contest on TV. Before any of that, Kambosos planned to have a workout following our interview just five days after the grueling war with Lopez that was one of the best fights of 2021.
"Yes, I’m going to train," Kambosos told DAZN News. "I will train probably around 7:30-8 p.m. somewhere."
Kambosos (20-0, 10 KOs) isn't attending these fights to have some fun. He's on a scouting mission for his first title defense. Kambosos' preference is to have it in his native Australia. What's going to determine his selection? Everything, which includes how the winner of each fight performs, who makes the most sense from a financial standpoint, etc. In terms of who he'd like the first foe as he deemed himself "The Emperor" of the lightweight division, Kambosos gave three names with wiggle room for one more in no particular order.
"All of them, I'm going to get them all eventually," Kambosos boldly said. "But the three guys would be in no order would be Lomachenko because I've always admired his work. I’d love to give him a shot. I feel that he did a lot of work to get all these belts, and then he lost them to Lopez. You look at the two fights that he had with Lopez and I had with Lopez. You compare them to what I did compared to what he did. Devin Haney, obviously, and Tank Davis as well. They are three big names.
"Ryan Garcia is there. I love that fight. He’s a good kid. Showed a lot of respect. But he needs a fight. He needs to stay busy. I know he's got issues and problems, but this is the fight game, and I can't be sitting here waiting around for him to get right. It might take forever. He needs to get right. Have a fight, a meaningful fight. He’s never even been a former champion. If I'm there, he could be in the mix as well. But I think they're the three guys."
Notching a lifetime changing victory means a lot of things. One win over the guy who had three-fourths of the belts at 135 pounds guarantees everything in your personal and professional life will never be the same. Kambosos is already going through that. But he hasn't given himself the time to smell the tea leaves and understand what he's just accomplished. He doesn't feel like he has to.
"Not yet," Kambosos admitted. "I think I will because like I said, I had that mentality that I was already champion. I've been having it for seven years that no matter what, with my work ethic and the hard work I put in, day in day out, I'm going to be champion no matter what. It was written in stone as long as I didn't lose my focus for any stupid reasons. It was set in stone that I was going to be champion. It's already been there. It doesn't need to sink in."