Teofimo Lopez and Shakur Stevenson are set for the first really big fight of 2026 in boxing, as the two will meet tomorrow night in a DAZN main event from the famed Madison Square Garden.
Lopez (22-1, 13
KO) will be defending his WBO super lightweight title, as Stevenson (24-0, 11 KO) comes up in weight yet again.
So who wins, and how?
Teofimo Lopez Keys: Find consistency, find stability
Teofimo, 28, is one of the most compelling fighters in recent boxing history. Turning pro in late 2016 after competing in the Rio Olympics for Honduras, the Brooklyn native quickly built a reputation on Top Rank shows as a brash, colorful knockout artist, thrashing the majority of his early opponents.
That version of Lopez is long gone. After starting is career 12-0 with 10 stoppage wins, he’s got just three stoppages in the 10 wins since, and it’s been up-and-down in terms of performance for him over the last several years.
- 2019: The first bit of a question mark, as Lopez dominates Masayoshi Nakatani, but the rugged and double-tough Japanese fighter just won’t go down, which seems to frustrate Teofimo a fair bit.
- 2020: Shakes up boxing with an upset win over Vasiliy Lomachenko, becomes a clear leader for the sport’s next generation of stars.
- 2021: Very next fight, an even bigger upset, as he loses to George Kambosos Jr, a confident Aussie who got into Teofimo’s head before the fight, then boxed his way into it during. In retrospect, there were very clear signs that Lopez had gotten ahead of himself with his ego, which happens.
- 2022: After a tough, debatable win over Sandor Martin, caught by ESPN cameras in-ring, questioning his own performance and whether he still “had it.” Teofimo felt the need to act like this was a big prank and he’d fooled all the haters, but it was a genuine moment, and not one of cut-and-dry weakness, either. This was a fighter asking himself a hard question after a tough fight.
- 2023: Beats Josh Taylor to win a world title in a second weight class. Though Taylor was past his peak, it was a good, strong win.
- 2024: Struggles through a win over Jamaine Ortiz, who doesn’t stand still and, in defeat, makes Teofimo look a little plodding and one-track in his approach.
- 2025: His best performance, arguably, since the Loma fight in 2020, as Teofimo clearly and impressively defeats Arnold Barboza Jr, leaving that disastrous Times Square gimmick event as the only one of the three headliners (Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney) to actually look good.
Much has been made over the years of Teofimo’s mentality. I think he’s a genuine guy and at his best, a terrific boxer. He is also abnormally emotional for a star fighter, and he wears his heart on his sleeve, even — or especially — when he doesn’t mean to do so.
Stylistically, we’ve seen Lopez struggle with technician-types, and it’s less an “exposure” of his boxing skills than his mental game. He beat Lomachenko, yes, but Loma was a lot better in the second half of that fight than the first. Kambosos, who is a sound boxer, flustered him mentally first, as did Martin, as did Ortiz. Barboza kinda fits this bill, but Teofimo was sharp, confident, and looked like his true best self in that fight, and he won clearly.
If Teofimo is going to win this fight, he has to stay switched on, especially when Shakur makes it very difficult. If Jamaine Ortiz was able to keep away from Teofimo enough to annoy him and affect his performance, then Shakur could be an absolute nightmare. But if Lopez can stay focused on his approach and not become overly frustrated by Stevenson’s inevitable tactics that mix skill and annoyance in equal measure, he does have some advantages.
Teofimo’s the better puncher, even if he’s not the KO King he was sold to be early on. He has very good boxing skills. He’s quick; even if Shakur has better hand speed, Teofimo’s is a good bit better than what Shakur has been seeing against William Zepeda, Josh Padley, and Artem Harutyunyan, too.
Shakur Stevenson Keys: Avoid, Annoy, Attack
Shakur Stevenson is pretty much never much fun to watch. The 28-year-old Newark native is a skilled boxer, incredibly confident in himself, and clearly fashions himself as coming down the paths laid down in the modern age by Floyd Mayweather and Andre Ward, stylistically sort of splitting the difference between those two masters, both of whom retired undefeated.
There’s also been some influence from Terence “Bud” Crawford, of course, but he doesn’t have the nastier edge that helped make Crawford so special.
Shakur has won world titles at 126, 130, and 135, and yet not one of those reigns was anything people will remember. He has recently said that he feels “resume” is “overrated” in boxing, and while some may reflexively scoff at that statement, I think he has a point in there.
What ultimately matters, especially for a Shakur type, not designed as a natural fan favorite, is what you do when the lights are on brightest.
What have been Shakur’s biggest fights? I’d say Oscar Valdez in 2022 and William Zepeda in 2025. He dominated both of those. Lopez is the biggest fight of his career to date, no question, and a lot of people seem to think he’ll do about the same in this one.
Shakur can be frustrating because you see flashes all over his career of what he can do if he opens up on offense more. But ultimately, why should he unless an opponent is good enough to make him? He wins rounds and wins fights by doing enough and not letting his foes get much if any rhythm or momentum. There is a sense that maybe he’s holding something back for a night when he really needs to dig in, but that’s a dangerous game to play, too. Maybe you hold onto it so long it doesn’t come out when you finally do need it most.
Shakur’s plan of attack should be pretty obvious, and it won’t be what fans looking for entertainment want to hear. He should take what we saw in Teofimo’s more frustrated nights and do his best to exploit it, to chip away at Lopez’s psyche as much as anything else, racking up dull rounds and pushing Lopez into mistakes and dumb boxing. He should avoid action, he should annoy Lopez, and he should attack when the openings are there. Stay back, draw in, get away. If he does that, Shakur could run away with this thing.
Teofimo vs Shakur prediction
A part of me really wants to pick Teofimo Lopez here because I want the fight to be good, and the best chance for that is a night where Lopez gets to Shakur and forces him to fight. I don’t really doubt that Shakur could answer that call and win something closer to a firefight than a tactical chess match, but it’s absolutely not what he wants to do, and gives Teofimo his best chance.
But Teofimo doesn’t have to make it a brawl, I don’t think, as I do believe there’s a chance that Lopez’s hand speed — which is much better than that of Oscar Valdez or William Zepeda — could be a bit more of an issue than Shakur is expecting. Even if it’s never close to a slugfest, if Shakur stays in range, this could be much tougher than anything he’s dealt with thus far.
Of course, Teofimo will have to make Shakur stay in range, and that asks a lot of a guy who struggled mightily to cut off the ring in his prior iffy outings. Stevenson himself is not always the most impressive winner — his W over Edwin De Los Santos was an all-time stinker — but he is always a clear winner, and he does enough of what he came to do. So far.
The smart money is on Shakur Stevenson, and I’m going with my head over my heart here. I do think Teofimo will keep it competitive and that he has a legitimate shot at the win. Any Shakur fight runs a high risk of being a little dull from an entertainment standpoint, but this is a compelling matchup, and a credit to both for saying they wanted it and actually doing it. Prediction: Shakur Stevenson by unanimous decision
