By: Sean Crose
“I saw a guy come in too fast,” George Kambosos said of Teofimo Lopez on a Joe Rogan Experience audio file. “He needs to be matched with someone who won’t take a step back.” Needless to say, Kambosos knows what he’s talking about when it comes to Lopez, as he lifted the lightweight crown from the man last month. “I would never take a step back,” he said, “I never gave him that inch.” Listening to Kambosos speak, one got the feeling that he planned to beat Lopez mentally as well as physically in the ring.
“I felt he was kind of a bully character,” Kambosos reflects on the run up to the match against Lopez. “He bullied Lomachenko. He bullied Comey. He beat all of his past opponents.” Having said that, Kambosos has no intention of being bullied by the famous Lopez. “I came from bullying,” he told Rogan. “I was an overweight kid as a child. I’ve been bullied all my life.” Convinced he knew the kind of man he had to deal with, Kambosos entered the ring feeling he had an edge over his foe: “I knew it right away – ‘Okay, I know how to deal with this guy. I knew what I had to do in this fight, “and he saw how serious I was.”
Kambosos said he knew Lopez was going to hit him hard in the first round. “We stayed focused,” he said of Lopez’s initial attack, “we kept sight of the tunnel and we finished the business… I know how to earn your respect. it immediately. He will go crazy. I’m still calm. Kambosos says he even told his team he would make his mark early in the fight, which he did by putting the overly aggressive Lopez on the mat. first round,” he told them, “I’ll catch him soon.”
When Kambosos did that, it changed the whole pacing of rights. “I don’t think a lot of people expect me to have a chance in the first round,” he said. “They (López’s team) have been very famous for one-round, one-round, especially his dad.” Kambosos also feels Lopez himself was shocked to the bone at being dropped in a round where he was clearly going to be in the knockout stages. “I saw it in his eyes as soon as I landed and he got up,” Kambosos said. “He thought: ‘What is that f-k thing?'”
