WBO super lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez will fight next on June 29 in Miami.
He will box Calgary’s Steve Claggett, 38-7-2 (26 KOs), in his first fight since an unspectacular outing against Jamaine Ortiz in Las Vegas in February.
The always outspoken Lopez had taken to social media to voice his displeasure at how talks had gone ahead of the Claggett fight being made.
“That’s the secondary stuff,” sighed Top Rank’s vice president of operations Carl Moretti.
“The part of it is who is actually available to take the fight and you put a list of names together and you want a guy that’s going to fight, that’s why we picked Jamaine Ortiz and you saw what happened there.
“Everybody was blaming Teofimo but Jamaine Ortiz ran like a track star, he didn’t make the fight, Teofimo came to fight. So that alone, we want guys that are going to try and come right at Teofimo, because that’s what he wants, a fight.
“To the general public, they don’t know Claggett. To people like us, we know how legitimate Claggett is. So that’s why we think it will be an entertaining fight.
“We thought we had it with Jamaine Ortiz, but Ortiz didn’t want to fight. What do you do? You find anyone that will come to him and fight him.”
The mix between 135lbs and 140lbs is competitive and brimming with starpower. Asked about some of the bigger names, Moretti said there was, “No shot at [Ryan] Garcia,” whose future is uncertain after two failed drug tests, and he is unsure about the chances of a Haney fight.
Moretti added: “I don’t think there really was a legitimate chance at Garcia, Haney you’d like him, but with all the bullshit going on right now you have no idea what’s going on there, plus he has to deal with his mandatory in Sandor Martin, so it’s tough to predict what’s going to be next.”