Newly crowned IBF, WBA, WBO, and The Ring lightweight champion George Kambosos Jr. believes his split-decision victory over Teofimo Lopez on Saturday night isn't controversial in the slightest.
Kambosos Jr. spoke with Fight Hub TV's Marcos Villegas to reflect on the win and his performance against Lopez, saying before the scorecards were read in his favor that he was worried it wouldn't go in his favor because of some hometown cooking, but ultimately didn't think the fight was close at all. He also addressed Lopez's post-fight comments that he believes he won the bout by a margin of 10-2.
“I didn’t believe the fight was close, but I was again worried with the judges," Kambosos Jr. said (h/t Bad Left Hook). "I’m in his hometown. My last two fights before that in (opponents’) hometowns, I had split decisions, so it was only right I had another split decision. I was sure one of the judges was going to go his way. But I did obviously believe they would give the right person the decision, which was me. I didn’t even think it was close, to be honest. I thought 9-3, possibly 10-2, and them two rounds were my mistake, not that he did anything special. If I stayed a little bit more composed, it could have been a full shutout. That shows — this was the 2020 Fighter of the Year, what am I? Yeah, there’s no real comment there. The world saw what happened. The boxing world, the media, the reporters. His own fans were booing him. I came in and was getting booed when I stepped inside them ropes, and by the end, they were applauding me and booing him, because it’s just delusion. Like I said, you’re delusional, brother. Move up the weight, whatever it is. It is what it is. It doesn’t bother me. He’ll look back on the tape, he’ll look at the video and say, ‘Well, I did get busted up, I should not have said what I said,’ because he lost a lot more fans instead of being humble and showing the respect that we both deserved in that fight. We went to war for the fans, and this fight took so long to happen, it’s only right that we gave an action fight like that, a Fight of the Year candidate if not Fight of the Year.”
He continued on to give his thoughts on a potential undisputed lightweight title unification bout with current WBC lightweight champion Devin Haney.
“We both said handle business and we’ll meet, so 100 percent, I love that fight. I think it’s a great fight. Let’s see if he handles the business, which I’m sure he will. That is a good fight against JoJo Diaz, too, no disrespect there. We’ll see, I’ll probably be there. If (Haney) does the business, we’ll do it in Australia in front of 80,000 people, early 2022.”
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