Jonathan Ingles: Hey. Good to have you. And look, the scorecards from last night are sitting in my head and I cannot shake them.
Devin Cross: The 114-114.
Jonathan Ingles: One judge. Saw it. As a tie. Rolando Romero versus Teofimo Lopez at T-Mobile Arena on August 23rd, and a third of the judging panel could not give it to the man who woke up this morning being called a three-division world champion.
Devin Cross: No, but — wait — that's not even the wildest part to me. Romero actually hurt Lopez in the middle rounds. Actually had him — and then just didn't finish it.
Jonathan Ingles: He did. And Lopez recovered and closed. Which — fine, credit where it's due. But Romero hadn't fought in fifteen months. His last fight was upsetting Ryan Garcia in May 2025 to win that WBA belt. And then nothing. So did Lopez look like a welterweight monster or did he look functional against a guy who'd been idle for over a year?
Devin Cross: Those are two very different things and boxing media is picking one of them real fast.
Jonathan Ingles: And Lopez didn't help — he was already calling out Haney, Paro, the Garcia-Benn winner on September 12th. All of it. In the ring. Immediately.
Devin Cross: Meanwhile Jack Catterall is on X like — 'I will be taking that belt 100%.' The mandatory's already knocking.
Jonathan Ingles: And Catterall's knocking, but the door's already being quietly closed. That's the real complication here. Because the scorecards don't just make the narrative fragile — they make the mandatory case harder to dodge. If this was a dominant performance, the WBA waves Catterall off without blinking. But 115-113, 116-112, one judge at 114-114? That's not a coronation. That's a split-panel fight.
Devin Cross: Adam Abramowitz had him 117-111. One-seventeen to one-eleven. That's a comfortable win. Douglas Fischer questioned the whole result. Same fight.
Jonathan Ingles: How does that happen?
Devin Cross: That's — no, that's the whole thing, right? Like, Abramowitz calls it solid, Fischer's basically going 'wait, really?' And they're credible people. It's not — I mean, this isn't two random fans arguing at the bar. That's a Ring magazine scorer versus the editor of The Ring and they are not watching the same fight.
Jonathan Ingles: And the boxing media collectively decided Abramowitz's read was the one worth running with.
Devin Cross: Come on — you always do the busier-smarter-fighter thing like it closes the argument. Lopez was busier, sure. But Romero actually hurt him. Middle rounds. Lopez got hurt and survived. Against a guy who'd been out fifteen months. That's the part the 117-111 card is papering over.
Jonathan Ingles: Frankly, the 'busier fighter' framing is a convenience. It's how you justify a close card to an audience that wants a clear story.
Devin Cross: And Lopez never put Romero away. Not once. For all the activity — didn't finish him. So the narrative is 'resurgent three-division champ,' but the actual scorecard evidence is one judge saw a draw and the guy's editor-in-chief at The Ring isn't buying the margin.
Jonathan Ingles: The fact is, majority decisions against inactive opponents don't usually get sold as rebirths. That's the gap between August 24th's headlines and what the scorecards actually said.
Devin Cross: But wait — that's where I keep getting stuck. Because the Romero who beat Ryan Garcia in May 2025, that's a name-brand upset win. Ryan Garcia. That's not a tune-up. That's a guy with a following, actual marketable name. And Romero won. And then — nothing. Fifteen months of nothing. And he comes in at 146.6 and still looks passive?
Jonathan Ingles: That's the thing nobody's saying. Romero beat Ryan Garcia and was still rusty enough that Lopez — the guy who lost lopsided to Shakur Stevenson in January — made him look passive. That's not resurgence. That's a layoff doing the work for you.
Devin Cross: The Stevenson loss. January 2026. Six months before this. And now the headline is three-division champion?
Jonathan Ingles: Six months. Lopsided. His WBO super lightweight title, gone. And now welterweight Lopez is — what, a different fighter? Based on what we saw against a guy who hadn't thrown a meaningful punch in over a year?
Devin Cross: Okay, no — I mean, actually — I want to play devil's advocate for one second. Lopez came in at exactly 147. Romero at 146.6. Lopez filled out that weight class. That's not nothing. He's building out physically at welterweight, that's a real thing—
Jonathan Ingles: Against someone who'd spent fifteen months playing pickup basketball, essentially. You walk into an NBA game after that and you know the moves — the timing's just gone. That's Romero on August 23rd.
Devin Cross: No, that's — yeah, that tracks. And the failure to capitalize when he actually hurt Lopez in the middle rounds? A sharp Romero finishes that. A fifteen-month-layoff Romero watches it slip.
Jonathan Ingles: Lomachenko in 2020 — that was the real Lopez. Unified lightweight titles, beating a pound-for-pound great. That's the ceiling. What we saw August 23rd doesn't tell us he's back to that. It tells us Romero's inactivity covered a lot of distance.
Devin Cross: And the part that makes all of this worse? What the WBA actually does with the Catterall mandatory — that's where this whole resurgence narrative either holds or completely falls apart.
Jonathan Ingles: The WBA is the lever here. Lopez doesn't decide his next fight — they do. And the WBA holds authority to grant a unification exemption that just... erases Catterall from the board. That's the actual decision point nobody's waiting on.
Devin Cross: And Catterall already posted on X within hours. 'I will be taking that belt 100%.' Hours. He's not waiting to see how the conversation develops.
Jonathan Ingles: And yet Lopez is calling out Garcia-Benn winner, Haney, Paro — naming all three — before Catterall's tweet even fully circulates. That's not a man who thinks he's fighting a mandatory next.
Devin Cross: No, and — okay, here's my full-chest take: the WBA grants the exemption. They will. Because Haney-Lopez or Paro-Lopez is a pay-per-view, and Catterall-Lopez is not. And the second they grant it, every mandatory challenger from here forward is officially negotiable. That's — no, I mean it — that rule becomes a suggestion with a price tag.
Jonathan Ingles: I actually think Catterall gets the fight.
Devin Cross: Wait — no. You don't believe that.
Jonathan Ingles: The scorecards make it harder to sell the exemption. A dominant champion — they wave Catterall off, nobody blinks. But 114-114 on one card? The WBA's political cover evaporates. Granting an exemption for a guy who just barely majority-decisioned an opponent on a fifteen-month layoff? That's a fight the WBA cannot sell as 'mandatory isn't ready yet.'
Devin Cross: That's — wait, actually that's a real argument. The margin does the work for Catterall here. Tighter scorecards, harder exemption.
Jonathan Ingles: And if Lopez doesn't get the exemption, the Haney unification, the Paro fight, Garcia-Benn winner — that whole undisputed campaign doesn't start. It's dead before it begins. Catterall makes that call, not Lopez.
Devin Cross: And that's — wait, that's the whole thing in one sentence. Catterall doesn't need the WBA to protect him. The scorecards already did it. My call: Lopez fights Catterall next, loses the belt, and the three-division narrative is dead before the ink dries on the Hall of Fame application.
Jonathan Ingles: My call is simpler. Nobody in boxing — not PBC, not the WBA, not a single outlet that covered the Lomachenko win in 2020 — has a financial incentive to say 'two-division unified champion who won a secondary belt on a majority decision.' That framing doesn't sell a pay-per-view. So nobody says it. The label sticks, the exemption gets granted, and Catterall gets paid to go away quietly.
Devin Cross: We're clipping this. Both of us. One of us is going to be spectacularly wrong.
Jonathan Ingles: It won't be me.
Devin Cross: That's what you said about Stevenson.
