Hearn Pushes Catterall While Dumping On Lopez vs Claggett
As it is in boxing, following his impressive unanimous decision win over Josh Taylor, all eyes are on who junior welterweight Jack “El Gato” Catterall (29-1, 13 KO’s) will face next. If given their way, he and his promoter, Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing, would love to dance with WBO 140-pound champion Teofimo “The Takeover” Lopez (20-1, 13 KO’s). Instead, Lopez will next go to war with the severely unheralded Steve Claggett. Clearly, Eddie Hearn feels this is a complete waste of time.
“Teofimo Lopez is fighting Steve Claggett, and I don’t want to be disrespectful to Steve Claggett, but its a fucking disgrace! It’s a joke, an absolute joke fight! It’s on ESPN. You talk about Teofimo Lopez coming off a good win against Josh Taylor, says he’s the best 140-pounder in the the world, that’s a joke fight. This is the guy [Catterall] who should be fighting Teofimo Lopez and we believe we beat him all day long.”
ANOREXIC RESUME
To Hearn’s point, there is frightfully little to justify, or even get overly excited about, a fight with Claggett. As previously mentioned, he has zero star power or even reasonable public recognizability to build a buzz around. To complicate that problem further, Claggett already has seven losses on his ledger. Also, the proud Canadian pugilist has lost 4 of his 6 fights staged in America.
This is precisely why Hearn, and boxers such as Keyshawn Davis, are raking Lopez over the coals for this next opponent. One does have to wonder, especially with the steel-plated cocksure attitude that he routinely assumes, what positives or advancements a win over Claggett would provide for Lopez.
BACK TO THE BRICKS!
Having placed himself in this self-constructed predicament, Lopez has all but guaranteed that if he does anything less than annihilate Claggett, he will be on the wrong side of an avalanche of horrible press. At the same time, that’s exactly why the saying, ‘this is why they fight the fights,” is so relevant.
Let’s not forget that Lopez also went up against George Kambosos, who many thought had no hope but came out on top. So, let’s see what Claggett has to offer and just hope it is more than Catterall, Hearn, Davis and a tremendous portion of the boxing world expect it to be!
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