Teofimo Lopez had been asking for better competition en route to a potential world title opportunity and his first fight in 2019 will be against a former world title challenger.
Just days after it was announced that Lopez would fight on the February 2 Top Rank Boxing card in Texas, it was later revealed by Top Rank Vice President Carl Moretti that his next opponent would be Diego Magdaleno. The fight will take place on the ESPN+ portion of the card taking place after the televised portion of the event concludes.
Lopez is coming off an impressive first-round knockout victory over Mason Menard on the undercard of Vasiliy Lomachenko's lightweight title unification against Jose Pedraza. It was Lopez's third consecutive knockout victory, eventually getting ranked in the top 15 in the WBA, WBC and WBO rankings at 135 pounds.
Magdaleno is on a three-fight win streak since unsuccessfully challenging for Terry Flanagan's WBO lightweight title back in 2015. The 32-year-old Magdaleno, a former WBO International lightweight titleholder, sports a 31-2 record and is coming off a close unanimous decision against Jesus Cuadro this past September.
The entire card will be shown on an ESPN platform one way or another. The first fight will start at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN+ and the streaming service will continue airing fights until 10 p.m. when the ESPN TV card start. That portion of the card features two world title fights. At midnight ET, Lopez's fight, as well as the rematch for the WBO light heavyweight title between Eleider Alvarez and Sergey Kovalev, will be shown exclusively on ESPN+.
