Key events
Round 5
Another good round by López, who is dialled-in and having his best moments of the night. He’s the busier fighter and landing the cleaner shots while making himself more a elusive target for the body work that Taylor was depending on early.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Taylor 9-10 López (Taylor 48-47 López)
Round 4
Taylor goes down in a heap but the referee correctly rules it a slip. López is outthrowing and outlanding Taylor and gaining in confidence. Chants of “Fuck you, Tay-lor!” resound from a wide swath of López supporters on the south end of the room. Then near the end of the frame, López rocks Taylor back into the ropes with a concussive right hand. And Taylor looks hurt! Taylor may be hurt! He’s on his feet and lucky the bell is close! End of the round a massive statement by López, who has the whole theater behind him.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Taylor 9-10 López (Taylor 39-37 López)
Round 3
Taylor is warned for hitting López after he’d pushed him halfway through the ropes. When López looks to touch gloves, Taylor immediately stamps him with a jab. López is landing the heavier shots at the moment but Taylor is doing better work in combination. This is already a very entertaining fight contested at a high pace that belies the one-sided scorecard that we have so far as López easily could have shaded rounds two or three.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Taylor 10-9 López (Taylor 30-27 López)
Round 2
López is fighting out of an orthodox stance. He’s lands a crunching left hook upstairs on Taylor, his best punch of the fight. A firefight breaks out in a neutral corner with about a minute to go in the round with both fighters trading head shots. Taylor diligently continues his work to the body catches López coming in with a right hand in the closing seconds. A very close round that could go either way, but Taylor has done just enough to nick it.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Taylor 10-9 López (Taylor 20-18 López)
Round 1
There’s the bell. Taylor’s size advantages looks even more glaring under the lights than on paper. Chants of “Te-o! Te-o!” ring through the crowd. Taylor pushes López against the ropes and opens fire with combinations, landing a couple to his opponent’s ribs. López’s hand speed looks formidable but Taylor has landed the better shots, making it a point to target the body. A small cut on the bridge of López’s nose is visible as he walks back to his corner after the bell.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Taylor 10-9 López (Taylor 10-9 López)
The fighters are making their entrances. First it’s Teófimo López, who emerges from the back of the theater in an aqua and gold robe with gold trim and makes the long walk down the aisle as Juicy by the Notorious BIG plays at the ear-splitting volumes. That robe, upon closer inspection, is dotted with Bud Light patches and has a large Walt Disney logo on the back, an unmistakable political statement (or troll job).
Now it’s Taylor’s turn, who makes his entrance to Ram Jam’s Black Betty in a tartan robe. Good stuff all around. The teeming crowd, which Top Rank says is a sellout and gate record for the theater, is popping from back to front.
Tale of the tape
Here’s a look at how Taylor and López measure up ahead of tonight’s main event. Taylor will enjoy advantages of two inches in height and one inch in reach.
Xander Zayas has won an eight-round unanimous decision over the durable Ronald Cruz. All three ringside judges scored it an 80-71 shutout. The rising star of the junior middleweight division improves to 16 wins in 16 pro outings, continues to chart improvement with each successive fight and looks remarkably polished for 20 years old. Big things await.
Next up: Josh Taylor v Teófimo López for Taylor’s WBO junior welterweight title.
Xander Zayas is off to a good start in the co-feature bout. The blue-chip junior middleweight prospect from San Juan dropped Ronald Cruz with an exquisite counter right in the first 30 seconds of the opening round, bringing the Puerto Rico Day weekend crowd to its feet. Cruz has steadied himself since, but Zayas has continued to bank rounds working behind the jab and appears in complete control through six frames of their scheduled eight-rounder.
Preamble
Hello and welcome to New York for tonight’s junior welterweight title fight between Josh Taylor and Teófimo López. We’re ringside at the Theater at Madison Square Garden for an eagerly awaited clash featuring a pair of former unified champions from different weight classes once bound for stardom but whose stars have dimmed over the past two years for various reasons. A quick refresher from today’s fight preview:
Taylor (19-0, 13 KOs), a stylish, aggressive southpaw who first shot to fame with a series of wins over current or former world champions Regis Prograis, Ivan Baranchyk and Viktor Postol, earned the biggest win of his career when he outpointed José Ramírez in a May 2021 unification bout, scoring a pair of knockdowns along the way. That made him the first British fighter, and only the fifth man in boxing’s four-belt era, to become an undisputed champion at any weight.
But the Tartan Tornado was fortunate to escape with a split-decision win in a mandatory defense against the unheralded Jack Catterall eight months later. He’s since vacated three of his four title belts in pursuit of a rematch that failed to materialize after Taylor tore his plantar fascia in March. While the Scot remains the alpha dog of boxing’s refractured junior welterweight division, it’s been more than 15 months since he’s made to show it inside the ropes.
López (18-1, 13 KOs), the heavy-handed 25-year-old nicknamed the Takeover, a nod to his disruptive career ambitions, has weathered even more dramatic swings of fortune. Having captured the IBF lightweight title in only his 15th paying fight by knocking out the durable Richard Commey, the cocksure left-hander from the Brooklyn neighborhood of Sunset Park delivered on his enormous promise in October 2020 with a unanimous-decision win over Vasiliy Lomachenko, the three-weight champion from Ukraine who for years had been considered the sport’s best fighter regardless of weight.
But after more than 13 months passed before López made his first defense, a thrice-postponed date with mandatory challenger George Kambosos, the American suffered a shock defeat by split decision that cost him the IBF, WBA and WBO belts. Already straining to make 135lbs, López made the climb to junior welterweight, where he’s since acclimated with a pair of unspectacular wins over fringe contenders.
The co-main event between Xander Zayas and Ronald Cruz has just started, so the main event go off before the top of the hour.
Bryan will be here shortly. In the meantime here’s his lookahead to tonight’s main event featuring two former unified champions whose careers are in need of a statement win.
