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With Teofimo Lopez upsetting Vasiliy Lomachenko on Saturday night, we could see a new era ushered in for the lightweight division that could produce some dynamite fights between some great young talents.
If Lopez (16-0, 12 KO) stays in the division that is.
In his post-fight interview, Lopez, 23, floated the idea of moving up to 140 going forward, having already won three of the four major titles and believing well enough that he has, in fact, fully unified the division as undisputed champion. (He hasn’t, but nobody really cares that much.)
But if he stays at 135, yeah, there’s some intriguing stuff that could be done, and two of the division’s other young guns have already openly said they want to fight him next year.
WBC titleholder Devin Haney (21-0, 15 KO) wants to meet in what would actually be an undisputed fight with no technical arguments about it:
Lopez vs Haney 2021
— Devin Haney (@Realdevinhaney) October 18, 2020
Let’s do It! #AllTheBelts
And Ryan Garcia (20-0, 17 KO) wants Lopez, too:
I got my fight against luke Campbell but I would love to fight Lopez, there is still a lot of unanswered questions in this lightweight division
— Ryan Garcia (@KingRyanG) October 18, 2020
As Garcia notes, he has a major league step-up fight against Luke Campbell on Dec. 5, and Haney is set to defend against ancient Yuriorkis Gamboa on Nov. 7.
But if Garcia and Haney both win, yeah, these would be super intriguing fights to make next year. There is also the chance, since Garcia-Campbell is for a shot at the belt Haney has, that we could, in theory, do Haney-Garcia, and the winner of that gets Teofimo.
That, of course, supposes Lopez stays at 135 long enough for that to happen, and that’s not a guarantee. All of this will sort itself out, but the young guys are gunning for one another, at least on Twitter.