Unified lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez has said that he would have wanted to fight Devin Haney even if he had lost to Jorge Linares last weekend.
Haney earned an impressive, if hard-won, victory over the Venezuelan at the weekend, and Lopez told the DAZN Boxing Show that he did not see any of the action.
“When I had my team out there at my dad’s place and they went to go see the fight, and they were checking him out,” he explained.
“By the time I got there the fight was over, from what everyone was telling me, from the sparring partners to my trainers, was that he was staying sharp and then he got clipped in the chest, and after that he was clinching and everything.
“Overall Devin is Devin: he’s going to be boxing and find a way to win.”
Lopez, who has recently been compared to Floyd Mayweather Jr., then said that more than Haney’s regular WBC belt, he wants to earn a victory over the 22-year-old champion solely to tick his name off his list.
“Even if Linares had clipped him at the end of the night, I’d have wanted Haney,” he claimed.
“I’d have wanted him for myself, even if he’s not the WBC champion, even if Linares had got the win, and that’s what I told my manager.”