Garcia vs. Lopez Eyed for February 6 as WBA Order Looms
Ryan Garcia and Teofimo Lopez are in talks to fight early next year, with February 6 the date being targeted. A complication has appeared on the WBA side, though: the match may not be sanctioned as a unification.
Lopez holds the WBA welterweight title after beating Rolando Romero by majority decision in August. A month later, Garcia kept his WBC 147-pound belt, which he took from Mario Barrios in February, with a second-round finish of Conor Benn.
Hearn on the mandatory order
If Lopez refuses to face mandatory challenger Jack Catterall, he could be stripped. Catterall's promoter, Eddie Hearn, told IFL TV he expects the WBA to hold its position and give his fighter a full world title shot, or else lift him from "regular" to "super" champion.
"The WBA made their decision. They ordered the fight [and] Team Teofimo Lopez complained. They said: 'We'd like you to reconsider; we'd like to look at having a unification,'" Hearn said. Lopez's manager, Keith Connolly, argues that a unification always supersedes a mandatory. Hearn disagrees: "Not when [the mandatory has] already been ordered, and not when there's a backlog of about three years."
By backlog, Hearn means that earlier champions, Romero among them, were allowed to skip their mandatory challengers. In his view that puts Catterall in a strong position whether he ends up fighting Lopez or being elevated to WBA "super" champion.
Where it would happen
Mike Coppinger of Ring Magazine reported that the fight is likely to take place in New York or Las Vegas, whatever the WBA decides. He wrote on X that he would be surprised if Garcia-Teofimo did not happen next, that February 6 is the target as talks continue, and that neither the WBA decision nor any prospect of a Floyd Mayweather fight would affect the negotiations.
Garcia has been linked to a bout with Mayweather, but according to Coppinger it is unlikely to happen soon. If it did, he said, it would come after the fight with Lopez.
Source: Boxing News