Shakur Stevenson was restrained by security guards after confronting Teofimo Lopez on stage as the build-up to their highly-anticipated world title fight was marred by unsavoury exchanges in New York.<\/p>\n
American Lopez, 28, will defend his WBO light-welterweight belt against fellow American Stevenson at Madison Square Garden on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Tensions flared at Thursday’s news conference when Stevenson, 28, misheard a crude comment by Lopez as being about his mother.<\/p>\n
Stevenson vowed to “smack” his opponent but sat back down and insisted the rivalry would be settled in the ring.<\/p>\n
“Keep that same energy on Saturday,” said Stevenson. “That’s when you’ll find out.”<\/p>\n
Stevenson, a three-weight world champion, has won all 24 of his professional bouts.<\/p>\n
Two-weight titleholder Lopez has won six fights in a row since his sole defeat in 23 outings to George Kambosos Jr in 2021.<\/p>\n
The shouting match continued as Stevenson and his camp, led by trainer and grandfather Wali Moses, accused Lopez’s father and coach of being too hungover to attend.<\/p>\n
“Where is your dad today?” Stevenson asked, suggesting without evidence that Teofimo Lopez Sr had been drinking at a hotel the previous night.<\/p>\n
Stevenson theatrically presented a bottle of alcohol in a paper bag, handed over by a security guard, as Lopez laughed.<\/p>\n
Lopez later struck a calmer tone, saying: “My soul is a beacon. We have something to cherish being here. We’ve got life. It’s not about trying to be a thug in the streets.”<\/p>\n
During the face-off, Stevenson continued chatting to Lopez, who kept a straight face and simply stared at him, before Stevenson delivered a light shoulder barge and walked off stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shakur Stevenson was restrained by security guards after confronting Teofimo Lopez on stage as the build-up to their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-398757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}