Teofimo Lopez's Ego Comes Back to Bite Him in Upset Loss to George Kambosos

Forget Roberto Duran. Forget Alexis Arguello.

Heck, you can even forget Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini.

Because rather than channeling the great and memorable lightweights of the last few generations on Saturday night, unified 135-pound champion Teofimo Lopez sounded a lot more like a sore loser at a music awards show.

On the short end of a narrow but certainly fair decision against unheralded challenger George Kambosos Jr., the brash Brooklyn native managed to turn a partisan midtown Manhattan crowd against him with a ridiculous post-fight rant in which he suggested he was robbed.

It was enough to make even Taylor Swift cringe.

“I’m as real as they come,” a bloodied, swollen Lopez said, stepping into camera range as Kambosos was being interviewed in the ring by DAZN analyst Chris Mannix.

“And I won this fight.”

A classy Kambosos simply smiled and whispered “you’re delusional” as his rival raved, but the fans at Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theater—roughly 90 percent of whom had been chanting and cheering the local champion all night—immediately indicated their incredulity with his suggestion.

The boos rained down.

Still, he continued.

“The referee knew I won. Everyone knew I won tonight,” he said. “I don’t believe it was a close fight at all. I had myself up 10-2 in rounds.”

For the record, one judge did see Lopez a one-point winner at 114-113, but he was overruled by two others who scored it 115-111 and 115-112 in the new champion’s favor.

The B/R scorecard had Kambosos up 114-113, giving him seven rounds to Lopez’s five.

But given Lopez’s incessant week-long chatter and promises of early annihilation, it was enough of a surprise that Kambosos was even standing at midnight, let alone draped in a now-ex-champion’s belts.

The humble Australian, who got the title shot only because he was deemed a mandatory challenger by the IBF, was a longshot +600 proposition to win the fight compared to Lopez’s standing as a -1000 favorite, according to the DraftKings Sportsbook. No less than 82 percent of the bets made as of fight night were on Lopez, as was 70 percent of the overall betting handle.

Nevertheless, it was Kambosos who provided a jolt by landing an overhand right that dropped Lopez to the seat of his pants in the final minute of the opening round—a session that had begun with the champion recklessly charging and winging punches in search of his own would-be quick erasure.

The shot didn’t appear to hurt Lopez a great deal, but it did temper his aggression a bit and clearly fueled Kambosos, who happily jawed at his foe at the close of nearly every round and continued to mockingly wave his right hand from time to time as they squared off in mid-ring.

The challenger held his own as Lopez continued to press through the fight’s opening four rounds, then put together a prolonged stretch of success through the eighth with a sharp left jab, effective movement and sharp power punches whether he chose to counter Lopez’s shots or initiate exchanges.

Still, even as he was clearly encountering more of a tussle than he’d anticipated, Lopez’s demeanor in the corner rarely changed as he mugged for in-ring cameras and was backed up by his trainer/father, whose sage advice between one pair of rounds was “f—k this mother f—ker up already.”

To his credit, Lopez did display championship mettle alongside his brattiness, wobbling Kambosos in the ninth and finally dropping him with a series of shots in the 10th. Still, it was the visitor from Down Under who laughed and rebounded last, appearing sharper and busier in the final two rounds to close the show.

He landed 41 punches to Lopez’s 16 across those two rounds, threw more punches in 10 of the 12 rounds and had total edges in both power punches (155 to 115) and overall punches landed (182-176).

“This was a razor-thin fight won by the fighter that dug the deepest late,” Mannix said. “The last two rounds George Kambosos went for it and he’s reaping the rewards.”

Another DAZN analyst, ex-140-pound champ Chris Algieri, agreed.

“One man fought with discipline. The other man fought with ego,” he said.

“We saw how that worked out.”

Lopez’s future, should he steer away from the new champ’s post-fight suggestion for a rematch in front of 80,000 fans in Australia, is most likely to work out at 140 pounds and beyond.

He had a particularly difficult time cutting to the 135-pound lightweight limit for this fight and immediately said afterward that Saturday’s disaster would have been averted entirely had he taken the taken the easy way out and “junked all the belts like everyone else does.”

“It’s been draining me the whole time,” he said.

In fact, aside from a would-be match with fellow lightweight title claimant Devin Haney, nearly all of Lopez’s future focus was on possible matches one division up the ladder, where suitors like Gervonta Davis, Ryan Garcia and Josh Taylor either already or soon plan to reside.

Make no mistake, another spectacular KO or ferocious beatdown will no doubt get the hype machine restarted in a new weight class. But if faced with a bigger foe more accustomed to taking punches from stronger opponents—as Kambosos said he was thanks to sparring sessions with Manny Pacquiao, among others—Lopez might again find himself writing mouthy checks his hubris can’t cash.

“This ain’t the end of Teofimo Lopez,” he insisted. “This is only the beginning.”

Maybe so. But tread carefully, “Takeover” fans.

And don't be surprised if it's you who gets taken again.