Bradley Explains Why Ortiz Beat Teofimo and Compares Him to Shakur

Former world champion and ESPN boxing commentator Timothy Bradley strongly disagrees with the judges' decision in the February 8th fight between Teofimo Lopez (20-1, 13 KOs) and Jemaine Ortiz (17-2-1, 8 KOs), where Teofimo successfully defended his WBO super lightweight title (up to 63.5 kg) by a judges' decision.

"The reason Ortiz won is that he controlled every aspect of the fight. He made the fight what it was. Many punches didn't reach their target. I could count on both hands how many effective punches were thrown by both, and I'm talking about effective punches.

Many of those rounds were judged on the secondary scoring criterion. It's called effective aggression. What does it mean? You think you have to be aggressive by working on the front foot. But you can be aggressive on the back foot too, making your opponent miss and punishing him with counter-attacks – and that's exactly what Ortiz did. He was the ring general.

There weren't many punches between Lopez and Ortiz, but there were more than in the fight between Shakur Stevenson and De Los Santos. You know, Shakur often fought on the back foot. Ortiz stood his ground at certain points. Even when Lopez cornered him, he said, 'Okay, I'll go to the corner. I'll beat you up a bit and then get back to my game plan."

Ortiz was the ring general, a ring genius throughout the evening. So, if you can't score a round based on clean punches, then you assess who was the ring general. Let's go back to the fight with De Los Santos, where Shakur was. He was the ring general. He fought when he wanted to fight, on his terms. The same was here.

The problem was that Jemaine's name isn't Sugar Ray Leonard, not Shakur Stevenson, not Floyd Mayweather. The fact is his name is Ortiz. He doesn't bring money and electrification to boxing. And who does? Lopez, and that's why he got the decision in his favor. That's the only reason why he won," Bradley stated to ProBoxTV.

It's worth noting that during this fight, Teofimo Lopez set a record for the least number of accurate punches.