Former unified lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez (18-1, 13 KOs) went through ten tough rounds against Sandor Martin (40-3, 13 KOs) at Madison Square Garden, and the judges had it a close encounter as Lopez got a split decision victory with scores of 96-93 and 97-92 in his favor. One judge had the bout 95-94 in favor of Martin.

An early clash of heads caused a broken nose for Martin, and he had to deal with that for the rest of the fight while using foot movement to throw off the timing of Lopez. A right hook in the second round sent Lopez to the canvas, which made things harder for the Brooklyn native to get an advantage in the opening stages of the bout. A mixture of counterpunching and jabs while coming forward got Lopez back into the bout, and Martin’s lack of offensive output proved to be key when the fight went to the scorecards. CompuBox statistics had Martin landing a total of 77 punches in ten rounds.

The lack of action in the fight prompted Lopez to criticize his opponent.

“It’s so hard to fight somebody like this when they’re running the whole time. Every time this guy committed, I countered and got him every time,” Lopez said. “He just ran the whole time. Every time that this man wanted to commit, I was countering him and tagging him. That’s why he was running the whole time.”

Martin was disappointed that he didn’t get the decision as he felt that he did enough to get the victory.

“I won this fight clearly,” Martin said. “For one judge, I only won two rounds? Really? There were two knockdowns. The referee didn’t count one of the knockdowns. He missed all of his punches. That’s a masterclass of boxing.”

Photos by James Bell of The Boxing Source.