By Mario Ortega Jr. –
Undefeated second generation fighter Kenny Lopez Jr. returns to the ring for elusive professional bout number five on Friday, May 13th at the DoubleTree Hotel in Sacramento, California. Lopez, who has been itching to get into the squared circle since late last year, will meet fellow unbeaten super middleweight Andrew Garcia in a four-round bout as part of “May Madness: Show Up or Shut Up.”
Lopez is the son of former California State light middleweight champion Kenny Lopez, a venerable TV-friendly fighter that fought a bevy of top guys over the course of a 44-bout career, including a win over former world champion Simon Brown in 1999. The younger Lopez was born too late to witness his father in his prime, but he does have some recollection of his dad’s three-fight comeback which ended with a victory in Stockton in May of 2005.
“I went to a couple of his fights, like two or three in Stockton, but I was hell of young though,” remembers Lopez Jr. “I wasn’t excited, but I would watch him. I was more into karate, that was my thing. I thought it was cool that my dad was fighting, but my mom and dad were divorced, so I wasn’t really with my dad all the time, if you know what I mean.”
Later in life, Lopez Jr. found his way to the same sport his father spent over twenty years competing in as a professional. “In high school, we used to do these backyard boxing fights,” explains the younger Lopez. “They used to get me to fight and I was doing it all the time. They would set it up and it was just fun after school type shit. So I remember going to my dad, ‘You need to teach me some shit, because this is getting to the point that a lot of people are watching. He said ‘alright.’ That’s how it kind of started.”
Lopez Sr. had moved on from being a professional fighter, and though he spent some time helping in gyms after his career, it would be his son that would bring him back to the sport. “My dad showed me how to throw my first jab and everything,” says Lopez Jr. “When I went back to the gym, sparring to just get into shape, that’s when my dad would come in and out, helping me here and there after work. When I started getting serious, he started showing up at the gym everyday. He told me, ‘You’ve got to start running and doing your shit.’ He was my first coach from the get-go.”
Growing up with divorced parents, one obviously does not get as much time with both of their parents as they would under different circumstances. Now as adults working towards a common goal, Lopez Sr. and Jr. have made up for lost time. “[Growing up,] with me, he was the man in my eyes,” explains Lopez Jr. “When we first started training, I was just listening to everything he said. Nowadays, he is more like my friend than a parent. We’ve gotten pretty close and I can tell him anything low-key and it is good.”
Once the younger Lopez got a feel for the fight game, he wanted to turn professional immediately, given his age at the time. However, Lopez relented to his father’s advice and gave the amateurs a run before entering the paid ranks.
“I just barely started boxing when I was 20-years-old,” describes Lopez Jr. “My thing was that I wanted to go pro right away and my dad was like, ‘No, you have to do amateurs.’ So I went the amateur route and rode that wave for a little bit. In 2020, with COVID, we were waiting for nationals, but the nationals kept getting rescheduled. I just wanted to do one national tournament against hell of good people and then go from there. My goal was to win the whole tournament and then leave [amateur boxing.] Then it just kept getting rescheduled and I just got impatient.”
Impatience for the pause on national level amateur boxing, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, led Lopez Jr. to go against his father’s advice and turn professional in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico on January 30th of last year against Luis Juan Hernandez. “In the beginning of last year there were no fights happening locally,” explains Lopez Jr. “I was already in shape. I am always training and always in shape, sparring 24/7. I was getting impatient. My dad was against the Mexico fights at first. He didn’t want me to do any of them. I was kind of against them too, but I thought I needed to get busy, instead of just sitting around here and becoming an Instagram fighter.”
The experience ended up being a little more harrowing than Lopez Jr. had expected. “The first fight [in Tijuana], my first fight, I could write a movie about it honestly,” explains Lopez Jr. “I went there by myself, with no coach, no corner, nothing. My dad and the people from the gym, everybody that was supposed to corner me, even Nate [Diaz] and all of them were going to come to the fight on the day of the fight. I was in San Diego, training with Diaz and them. My dad was going to meet up with me the day of the fight after I went down there to do the weigh-ins. So when I am weighing-in in Mexico, they announce that everyone that is going to be in your corner needs to be here to take a COVID test. It was a whole situation, and I almost didn’t [fight], because I had no coach. The promoter ended up having to corner me. It was a pretty crazy experience.”
Fighting without anyone familiar in his corner, for his professional debut no less, was only a fraction of what made Lopez’ first pro fight weekend an experience to remember. “I even got took for a couple hundred bucks at the border,” recalls Lopez. “I had cut a few pounds and was not eating and drove myself to the weigh-in. The guy at the border started fucking with me. He told me to pull over and asked me why I didn’t have something. My car was registered, but maybe I didn’t have the paperwork with me or something. He said he couldn’t let me through, but when I pulled out my I.D. he saw the money in my wallet. I was just trying to hurry because I needed to get to the weigh-ins. I didn’t think to put my cash away. He said, ‘It is going to be 200 bucks or I can’t let you through.’ It was a shit experience. It honestly didn’t go well until I walked into the venue. Once I got to the venue I felt like nothing else bad would happen.” Lopez would be right, as he started his pro run with a second-round stoppage.
Despite his difficult first experience fighting in Tijuana, Lopez would go back three more times last year to run his record to 4-0. “I learned a lot [from fighting in Tijuana]. As far as in the ring, I got used to the lighter gloves, no headgear and the pace,” explains Lopez. “These Mexico fights take a lot of energy out of you, at least for me, because I was doing it all by myself. I would talk to the promoter myself, get the fight myself and my dad didn’t want me doing it. So I thought if no one was going to do it for me, I was going to do it myself. So I was going to these Mexico fights always worrying about some janky shit. So I felt it took me out of my game a little bit, energy wise. Also, on top of that, I don’t speak Spanish. So I am over there in Mexico on toes, feeling like everybody was out to get me, being skeptical about it. It took a lot of the focus away from the fight, but it was good to get used to. I felt it kind of got me more experience in the ring, but also outside of the ring as far as the business end and how shit is handled on that end.”
As tough as the business of boxing can be for an English speaker in Tijuana, Lopez has run into a couple of roadblocks getting that first pro bout on his home soil as well. Back in October of last year, Lopez, a native of Ceres, California, was primed to take on Yuba City, California’s Tony Hernandez at the DoubleTree Hotel in Sacramento. Much to the chagrin of Lopez and his team, it turned out Hernandez was a little too far from the super middleweight limit to make the fight a reality after some back and forth over the contract.
“It got to the point where I said this guy is not that big of a deal to me,” explains Lopez. “And I am pretty sure I am not that big of a deal to him either. That all happened in October. I was ready to go in October, went to Vegas and had a full ass camp and everything.”
Fast forward to the next event to be held at the DoubleTree, promoted by Nasser Niavaroni’s Upper Cut Promotions this past January, and again Lopez-Hernandez was put together and looked to be a go for the main event. With a new COVID variant running rampant across the country, both fighters would end up coming down with the virus in the lead up to the bout.
“There was a news interview on that Monday, and I was supposed to go, but Joeshon [Jones], who is hell of cool, ended up going in my place because I was sick that day,” remembers Lopez. “I was getting skeptical, because I was really, really sick, with chills and everything. I had to change my shirt like four times in the night. Just really sick, with aches and pains. I told Nasser, ‘I can’t make it to the news interview today, I am too fucking sick, but I am going to work out tomorrow and I’ll tell you how I feel.’ I worked out the next day and I felt regular, so I said, ‘Let’s go.’ We had the weigh-in and the face-off, so I thought we were on.”
Unfortunately for Lopez and fans of both fighters, the fight ended up getting canceled the afternoon of the fight, as Hernandez fell ill with reemerging symptoms from the virus. Despite the obvious disappointment, Lopez holds no ill will against Hernandez, who is scheduled to fight on the same bill next month, but he decided to go another route all the same.
“I ran into [Hernandez] at Lightning’s [Boxing Club], and it was all good,” explains Lopez. “He’s a cool dude. He seems hell of cool and owns his own gym, which is something I want to do. I just figure we need to lay off this guy for a bit, because I am not going to give him a two-year camp to fight me. We might as well just relax, find somebody else. When it comes up for the next fight, if Anthony is ready to go and is back in his fighting mode, then fine, we will fight Anthony.”
With the off-and-on Hernandez fight on the backburner for now, Lopez looks towards finally stepping into the ring in his home state and country against Andrew Garcia (3-0-1, 2 KOs) of Oxnard, California on Friday, May 13th. “I don’t know anything [about Garcia] really,” says Lopez confidently. “All I have looked up is his BoxRec. I am just taking it as a performance. I am trying to put on for my first show [in the United States.] The fight is at 165, which is nothing for me. I weighed-in at 167 for my last fight, easy.”
Even though Garcia’s fights, most of which took place at the same Tijuana venue Lopez made a home away from home last year, are readily available for viewing online, Lopez doesn’t get too hung up on studying the videos. “They are on YouTube and I sent it to my dad,” explains Lopez Jr. “Honestly, I’ll watch [my opponent’s fight], but I’ll only watch it for 30 seconds. I don’t like over analyzing it. [My dad] will probably just tell me a few things about the dude and tell me to keep one or two things in mind. That’s all it really is, sticking to your game, but keeping a few things in mind for the specific person. Mostly I just really want to stick to my game and do my thing that I always do.”
While not looking past Garcia, Lopez hopes to carry momentum from May into a run of victories in the United States, with less strenuous car rides over the border and more fights in front of his family and friends.
“I want to fight out here against whoever,” explains Lopez. “I want to get up in the rankings on these people and just keep moving up. I can’t wait to put on a show in front of everybody. My local people and my family. I can’t wait to see everybody out there.”
Tickets for the event, titled “May Madness: Show Up or Shut Up,” and promoted by Upper Cut Promotions, are available online at uppercutpro.com
Title photo by Cristian Correa
Mario Ortega Jr. can be reached at [email protected]
