Terence Crawford and Teofimo Lopez got into a heated argument recently, with both fighters threatening to fight outside the ring. The usually calm Crawford lost his cool during an Instagram Live session with Lopez and his father.
Crawford explained what went down:
"He see me and he's laughing like 'when we gonna fight?' I checked his dad because his dad slapped my shoulder trying to get some attention after my fight … I said if you ever put your motherf***ing hands on me again I'm gonna beat your ass. He was like 'we just want the fight.'"
When Lopez asked if Crawford wanted to fight outside, the four-division champ didn't back down:
"Yeah we're gonna fight outside, motherf***er. What you talking about? Your dad hit me outside the ring. Yeah I'm gonna beat your ass outside the ring."
Lopez later addressed the incident on the Front Row with Mack & Rick podcast. He claimed Crawford poked his face, which set him off:
"When it got to the point he was jabbing like this and ended up poking my face, I lost my s**t and security was there trying to hold me down. I don't play that … So yeah, sitting back it was like 'how am I gonna get this motherf***er?'"
The super-lightweight champ then made a controversial comment, calling Crawford a "monkey". He tried to justify it as an innocent analogy but admitted he knew it would stir things up.
"I was like I know this is gonna cause some friction, all right, well f**k you, you're a monkey to me right now. It is what it is. The fight game. That's when we're gonna throw down."
Lopez dismissed Crawford's offer to settle things outside the ring:
"What did he say? He said outside the ring. I don't play by those rules. Me? I just don't. My business is in the ring, it's not outside the ring. Cause, truth be told, a lot of things can happen south. And we don't need to bury people right now. We need to inspire people right now."
Crawford's currently pushing for a fight with Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez, which would be a two-weight jump. Lopez wants to move up two divisions to face Crawford, but that fight seems unlikely given the recent bad blood between them.
