FAITH MANAGEMENT
“I KNOW this sounds insane, but I knew he was going to win. I just thought he was going to win right from the beginning.”
It is Thursday afternoon, five days after Teofimo Lopez outpointed Vasiliy Lomachenko at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas to unify the lightweight division, and David McWater, a boxing manager of relatively recent vintage, is sitting in his New Jersey home racking his head, trying to articulate why he was not able to fathom any other outcome than the one that ended up unfolding on the previous Saturday night.
Lopez, a cocksure 22-year-old Honduran-American, broke down the seemingly shatterproof Ukrainian wiz Vasiliy Lomachenko over 12 rounds to earn a surprising unanimous decision. All three judges scored it comfortably for the youngster (though Julie Lederman was seemingly too casual with her 119-109 scorecard), who is now the lightweight division’s fully unified champion.
McWater manages Lopez, has guided him since he joined the professional ranks in 2016 on the heels of a stellar amateur career, so it seems merely a matter of course that McWater would envision only the rosiest of scenarios for his charge. What is a manager if he is
