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Key events
Xander Zayas is off to a good start in the co-feature bout. The blue-chip junior middleweight prospect from San Juan dropped Ronald Cruz with an exquisite counter right in the first 30 seconds of the opening round, bringing the Puerto Rico Day weekend crowd to its feet. Cruz has steadied himself since, but Zayas has continued to bank rounds working behind the jab and appears in complete control through six frames of their scheduled eight-rounder.
Preamble
Hello and welcome to New York for tonight’s junior welterweight title fight between Josh Taylor and Teófimo López. We’re ringside at the Theater at Madison Square Garden for an eagerly awaited clash featuring a pair of former unified champions from different weight classes once bound for stardom but whose stars have dimmed over the past two years for various reasons. A quick refresher from today’s fight preview:
Taylor (19-0, 13 KOs), a stylish, aggressive southpaw who first shot to fame with a series of wins over current or former world champions Regis Prograis, Ivan Baranchyk and Viktor Postol, earned the biggest win of his career when he outpointed José Ramírez in a May 2021 unification bout, scoring a pair of knockdowns along the way. That made him the first British fighter, and only the fifth man in boxing’s four-belt era, to become an undisputed champion at any weight.
But the Tartan Tornado was fortunate to escape with a split-decision win in a mandatory defense against the unheralded Jack Catterall eight months later. He’s since vacated three of his four title belts in pursuit of a rematch that failed to materialize after Taylor tore his plantar fascia in March. While the Scot remains the alpha dog of boxing’s refractured junior welterweight division, it’s been more than 15 months since he’s made to show it inside the ropes.
López (18-1, 13 KOs), the heavy-handed 25-year-old nicknamed the Takeover, a nod to his disruptive career ambitions, has weathered even more dramatic swings of fortune. Having captured the IBF lightweight title in only his 15th paying fight by knocking out the durable Richard Commey, the cocksure left-hander from the Brooklyn neighborhood of Sunset Park delivered on his enormous promise in October 2020 with a unanimous-decision win over Vasiliy Lomachenko, the three-weight champion from Ukraine who for years had been considered the sport’s best fighter regardless of weight.
But after more than 13 months passed before López made his first defense, a thrice-postponed date with mandatory challenger George Kambosos, the American suffered a shock defeat by split decision that cost him the IBF, WBA and WBO belts. Already straining to make 135lbs, López made the climb to junior welterweight, where he’s since acclimated with a pair of unspectacular wins over fringe contenders.
The co-main event between Xander Zayas and Ronald Cruz has just started, so the main event go off before the top of the hour.
Bryan will be here shortly. In the meantime here’s his lookahead to tonight’s main event featuring two former unified champions whose careers are in need of a statement win.
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