The fight date between Teofimo Lopez and George Kambosos Jr has ultimately fell off. A highly anticipated championship bout between unified lightweight champion and IBF mandatory contender will not go ahead on Saturday, October 16.
The pair was initially set to square off on June 5, which was then rescheduled to June 19. The fight didn’t go ahead as the champion contracted coronavirus and the fight was postponed to August 14.
The bout was then shifted once again with a new date announced for Monday, October 4 at Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York, NY.
October 4 turned to be no go either, as the event would be held side by side with NFL’s Raiders vs. Chargers, as well as fell on the first day of Fury vs Wilder 3 Fight Week.
As a result Triller Fight Club, that has been running the show after winning rights in February, decided to lock in a new Lopez vs Kambosos date for October 16 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY. The plan didn’t happen to work due to financial issues.
‘Enough is Enough’
Teofimo Lopez (16-0, 12 KO’s) agreed for a new date under the condition of a purse advance, while George Kambosos Jr (19-0 10 KOs) asked for $400,000 raise, The Ring reported. The promotion, that succeed to stage Mike Tyson’s ring return against Roy Jones Jr, decided to pull the plug.
“[With] the advertising we’d lined up, the performance marketing we’d lined up, the radio spots, the television spots, all this stuff, quite frankly it’s fair to say that at the moment, we’re between $9 million to $10 million in promotional dollars, promotional money, that we’ve spent to promote this fight,” Triller COO Thorstein Meier told Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports. “We’ve gotten nothing out of it and. This is why we’re saying enough is enough”.
In addition, according to boxing journalist Dan Rafael, Triller was exploring whether the International Boxing Federation would strip Kambosos of the IBF lightweight mandatory spot, which would let Lopez fight other opponents.
“I obtained letter from Triller lawyer to IBF seeking to get Kambosos stripped of mandatory status,” Rafael posted on Twitter. “1 of many interesting nuggets: Lawyer wrote that to help get Kambosos to agree to date switch, Lopez agreed to “verbally and in writing” to give $150k of his purse to Kambosos.”
While Teofimo Lopez vs George Kambosos Jr appears to be canceled, Triller is still set to host a night of boxing on October 16. Among the announced junior welterweight bouts Daniel Gonzalez (20-2-1, 7 KOs) goes up against Petros Ananyan (15-2-2, 7 KOs) and Cletus Seldin (25-1, 21KOs) takes on William Silva (28-3, 16 KOs).
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