By Allan Fox: Teofimo Lopez says WBC light welterweight champion Regis Prograis is getting “comfortable” hiding behind the 65-35 split offered to his challengers, using that to avoid the top guys and instead facing little-known lower-ranked bottom 15 guys.
After listening to Teofimo babble on social media, Prograis said, “Fight me, and I’ll show you how comfortable I am.”
At the same time, Teofimo (18-1, 13 KOs) says he’s not that kind of a fighter and that he takes matches “for the glory.”
It sounds excellent what Teofimo is saying about him being cut from a different cloth from the others, but he just turned down a fight with Prograis (28-1, 24 KOs), saying that he can’t fight in the U.S because his promoters at Probellum are tied to MTK. Therefore, Prograis can’t fight in the U.S.
It was a wacky excuse by Teofimo as his rationale for why he can’t fight Prograis, making it obvious that he doesn’t fancy taking the match-up because of how difficult it’ll be. Teofimo is the second fighter that has turned down a guaranteed title shot against WBC 140-lb champion Prograis. Jose Ramirez was the first one to reject the fight, saying that he wasn’t happy with the 65-35 split.
Now, Ramirez is fighting Richard Commey on March 25th for what will likely be less money than what he would have gotten for fighting Prograis.
“A lot of these fighters, especially in this era and after the COVID times. He’s talking reckless in this sense because to him, he had a mandatory in Jose Ramirez, and that was a 65-35 percent cut, right?” said Teofimo Lopez on social media, talking about WBC light welterweight champion Regis Prograis.
“Regis Prograis gets 65% of it, and Jose Ramirez gets 35. He [Ramirez] opted out; he didn’t want to take it because you’re probably going to lose 600 to 750,000 dollars worth going into that fight.
Dude just be talking in circles. Fight me and I’ll show you how comfortable I am https://t.co/2QXbHzdx37
— Rougarou (@RPrograis) January 18, 2023
“See, I’m not that kind. I just take fights. Do you know what I mean? That’s just who I am. I’m here for the glory. The same thing I had to do, I had to take. I took basically a million point two off when I fought Vasyl Lomachenko, who was arguably the best fighter and pound-for-pound great at that time.
“I could have made with that fight. I should have got 2.5 million for that fight. They didn’t give me that. So they gave me my minimum, which was 1.2, and that’s after the fight going up against someone like that for all the belts. It’s all about the glory. I mean, from my side.
“So, I think Regis is kind of comfortable. He feels like no one is going to want to take that chance. Fighters that are in the top 10 or the top 5 because they want to get paid more. But you got to understand; you’ve still got to make your stripes.
“You still got to build it. You still got to make that. What is the principle of all this? At least for me, when I saw Gerry Gooney fight George Foreman and all these other great champions, it was all about the glory. You want to become a world champion, the top of the world.
“So yeah, I’m shaking my head because this guy [Prograis] is just getting comfortable because he feels like no one is going to want to fight him. So he’s going to fight someone that is going to be volunteering to face. Someone probably in the top 15, someone that people probably don’t even know.
“I think he’s getting real comfortable, and that’s why he’s calling out Ryan Garcia, myself, and all that because he thinks in himself that no one is going to want to take a 35% cut,” said Teofimo about his theory about why Prograis called him and Ryan Garcia out.
