Teofimo Lopez dismisses WBA's Jack Catterall mandatory, rules out fighting Devin Haney for now
WBC welterweight champion Ryan Garcia and British star Conor Benn are just two and a half weeks away from clashing in one of the biggest fights of 2026. Newly crowned WBA champ Teofimo Lopez will be watching their Sept. 12 blockbuster with particular interest.
“We’re just waiting for Ryan Garcia and Conor Benn, to see how that outcome looks, and we’ll go from there,” Lopez said of his next step on Uncrowned’s “The Ariel Helwani Show” Wednesday.
Garcia is understood to have one fight remaining on his agreement with Golden Boy Promotions and DAZN, while Lopez has a multi-fight contract with the broadcaster. Chris Mannix reported Tuesday that Lopez and Garcia would likely be facing off next.
The matchup, if it comes to fruition, would represent a WBC and WBA unification and a major event for DAZN. Importantly, it would also give the network significant leverage, as Garcia would then be entering free agency without having taken the biggest fight available to him on DAZN: a rematch with WBO welterweight champion Devin Haney.
After Lopez defeated Rolando “Rolly” Romero for the title last Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, he was immediately called out by Australia’s IBF champion, Liam Paro.
“Absolutely [I’d fight Paro],” Lopez said Wednesday. “I’m interested in all these world champions.”
“The only one I’m not interested in at the moment is the WBO champion, Devin Haney. I would like to wait for him for the final countdown for myself — it’s the undisputed. I would like to beat him for all the belts for undisputed at welterweight.
“Liam Paro, I heard that he said what he saw on Saturday night was just the cherry on top for [Paro] to beat me. Easy for me to give him a call. … With Takeover Promotions [Lopez’s promotional company], we don’t have to report to nobody. We’ll make these fights happen for everybody.”
Lopez (23-2, 13 KOs) ruled out fighting Haney in his immediate future in speaking with Uncrowned, stating that he would like to wait until the matchup is for the undisputed championship — which could be accomplished quite quickly if ongoing talks between Haney and Paro progress and Lopez does, in fact, fight and beat Garcia next.
Lopez held three of the four belts at lightweight and the WBC’s “Franchise” designation from 2020-2021, while Haney held the WBC world title. It was Haney who eventually became undisputed champion at 135 pounds, but Lopez feels he was wrongly denied that recognition himself after Lopez’s October 2020 win over Vasiliy Lomachenko.
“I beat Lomachenko for winner takes all. ESPN literally had the promo for that. They literally advertised it as ‘Winner Takes All,’ meaning what? Meaning undisputed,” Lopez explained. “Apparently by the rules of boxing business — it was business — they declared that Devin Haney was the WBC champion and not Lomachenko; because of that, they disputed my undisputed. So I think that the only way we could get that back is by showing everyone Teofimo is undisputed, he actually beat Lomachenko better than Devin Haney, and when he beats Devin Haney for the undisputed, it will [make people realize] and awaken everybody else up that he was undisputed always.”
Although Lopez hopes for a unification fight next, a major stumbling block does exist.
Romero was initially ordered to defend his title against the WBA’s “Regular” champion, Jack Catterall. The sanctioning body, however, allowed Romero to face Lopez instead on the condition that he would take on Catterall within 180 days after the bout. When Lopez won on Saturday, that mandatory obligation was placed on him — but the American doesn’t see it that way.
“The contract that they signed, I never was involved in that contract,” Lopez said of the WBA ruling made for Romero vs. Catterall. “I am trying to delegate it with my legal team, ‘Hey, go through the legal team, we’ll talk. I don’t duck nobody; we’ll fight.’”
“However, if I need to express it a little bit more [clearly], that contract that they signed for the extension of whatever it was, 180 days, was with the name of Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero, not Teofimo Lopez. That means the whole situation of mandatory and everything changes now — it’s a reset. And I think people are forgetting that. They’re a little bit over the head on that.”
Catterall’s promoter, Matchroom’s Eddie Hearn, doesn’t agree with Lopez’s interpretation.
“WBA already confirmed that the obligation would fall on Teo if he became champion,” Hearn said Wednesday.
As boxing fans have learned with the WBA, though, you can never rely on them to enforce their mandatories, so Catterall could well be left waiting longer for his deserved opportunity as Lopez pursues a Las Vegas date with Garcia.
