Teofimo Lopez officially has taken over. The brash Brooklyn native built an early lead, fended off Vasiliy Lomachenko's comeback in the second half of their 12-round lightweight title unification fight Saturday night and upset Lomachenko by unanimous decision.
The scores were wider than the action indicated, though, as judges Tim Cheatham (116-112), Julie Lederman (119-109) and Steve Weisfeld (117-111) had it for Lopez by big margins, according to BoxingScene.
Cheatham, Lederman and Weisfeld scored eight, 11 and nine rounds, respectively, for Lopez. Lederman scored only the 11th round for Lomachenko.
Read alsoTwo Ukrainian boxers land up on Ukraine's Myrotvorets 'black list'The scoring notwithstanding, in just his 16th professional fight, Lopez (16-0, 12 KOs) became boxing's first fully unified lightweight champion in the sport's four-belt era. He retained his IBF belt and won the WBA "super," WBC "franchise" and WBO titles from Lomachenko (14-2, 10 KOs).
The 23-year-old Lopez also snapped the 32-year-old Lomachenko's 13-fight winning streak and out-boxed an opponent who was commonly considered one of the top three fighters, pound-for-pound, in the sport. Before Saturday night, Ukraine's Lomachenko, who was a 4-1 favorite, hadn't lost since Mexico's Orlando Salido upset him by split decision in their 12-round featherweight title fight in March 2014 at Alamodome in San Antonio.
Lopez beat Lomachenko more convincingly than Salido. There is not a rematch clause in the contracts for their fight, thus it'll be up to Lopez to grant Lomachenko a rematch.
