Psychological Warfare Tactics of Lightweight Champion Ferocious George Kambosos
Editorial By Robert Brizel, Head Real Combat Media Boxing Correspondent
Enthusiastic trash talk leading into a confrontational stare down weigh-ins has often been used to sell fight card tickets and Pay-Per-View boxing and sporting events. Some fighters like Muhammad Ali have sold fights on their mouth. Other fighters like Sugar Ray Leonard, Sugar Ray Robinson, Thomas Hearns, Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. have sold Pay-Per-View buys and event tickets based on following, and large fan bases.
“Ferocious” George Kambosos Jr. has stated ex-champion Teofimo Lopez can have a rematch in Australia in 2022 whenever he wants. Kambosos is a modern day Ronald “Winky” Wright on the road. Kambosos has fought and won in the United States, the United Kingdom, Greece, Malaysia, Madison Square Garden, Wembley, Las Vegas, Foxwoods, Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, you name it. Kambosos is well traveled, fearless and ferocious. Maybe Lopez should have checked the Kambosos resume before taking the challenge of the mandatory challenger. Kambosos is a regular globetrotter who’ll go anywhere, like the song “I’ve been everywhere.” That’s a good thing, all things considered.
Kambosos, 20-0 with 10 knockouts, age 28, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, will apparently not get the opportunity to fight Lopez a second time, as Lopez has proclaimed he believes he beat Kambosos, and is moving up to 140 pounds, the super lightweight division instead. Ironically, Kambosos may be looking at a challenge in 2022 from ex-champion Vasyl Lomachenko, 15-2 with 11 knockouts, Oxnard, California by way of Ukraine, if Lomachenko can get by another ex-champion, Richard Comney, 30-3 with 27 knockouts, Bronx, New York, by way of Accra, Ghana, in a probable 12 round eliminator at Madison Square Garden on December 11, 2021. Kambosos versus Lomachenko would be a great bout!
Kambosos, who now holds the World Boxing Association Super, World Boxing Organisation, and International Boxing Federation World Lightweight titles, engaged in trash talk during open workouts, which got the two fathers, Kambosos Sr. and Lopez Sr., involved into the controversy. This goes beyond selling tickets. Kambosos was testing to see if Lopez and team had egos or not on a high unconscious to the subconscious level of emotional conflict. Kambosos psychological warfare approach evidently worked.
Lopez predicted a first-round knockout victory over Kambosos, getting emotionally charged and taking the subconscious bait. “One round (is all I will need), because just to show how all that talking, that don’t work with me,” Lopez told a group of reporters. “We talk (me and my team) but we back it up. All that talking that you’re doing, you gotta show something. You been in two fights [which ended in] split decisions (victories). You know, Mickey Bey, and then Lee Selby. You know, like, I ain’t a Mickey Bey, (and) I ain’t a Lee Selby. I’m Teofimo Lopez.” That statement now sounds like a bag of hot air after the fact.
Lopez, by taking the bait, came out with an emotional charge swinging gangbusters in the first round Gerald McClellan style. Lopez is not McClellan in his prime, who iced many a pretender in the first round as the world middleweight champion. Rather, Lopez ran into an extraordinarily talented counterpuncher in Kambosos, who entered the first round looking for Lopez to make a mistake, much like an overzealous Manny Pacquiao got knocked out in the sixth round by Juan Manuel Marquez in the sixth round in December 2012 at MGM Grand’s Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. By embracing a wild emotional mindset for the first round, Lopez set himself up to make a mistake, and Kambosos countered perfectly to drop him. By the time Lopez dropped Kambosos ibn the tenth round, and Kambosos got up, that knockdown was insufficient to overcome the lead Kambosos built up on two scorecards entering the championship rounds
Lopez, like so many fighters before him, underestimated his opponent with supreme overconfidence and got burned, much like Joe Louis got burned by the counterpunching ex-world heavyweight champion Max Schmeling at Yankee Stadium in Bronx, New York in the 1936 Ring Magazine 1936 Fight of the Year, in which the 24-0 Louis got knocked down several times and eventually out in the twelfth round by the counterpunching Schmeling. Lopez did not see the end of his brief reign coming, but more so, he did not see the cultural brouhaha engineered by Kambosos and his team during the open workouts leading up to the press conferences to drive Lopez crazy. You need to have the sort of confidence where you believe you can win because you have done the best you could, with emotions in check.
In a nutshell, Kambosos was able to push Lopez over the edge. Not physically before the bout, in that sense, but by straining emotions beyond the break point to drive Lopez into an unconscious emotional frenzy when the bell rang starting round one. In effect, Kambosos, by knocking down Lopez, now 16-1 with 12 knockouts, Jonesboro, Arkansas, in the first round, put Lopez into a 10-8 hole, down on points on all three scorecards, a hole which the astounding unsuspecting Lopez, in disbelief, could not overcome over the next eleven rounds on the scorecards against a superior counterpunching opponent. “Ferocious George” was not bothered by anything Lopez threw during the contest, and the bruised and battered face of Lopez told the real true story. Lopez clearly lost the bout. Instead of playing the part of coward or sore loser, Lopez should win a comeback bout, and then rematch Kambosos like a man. The second time around, Lopez will need to put his emotions in check, or he will just repeat the same scenario in whatever division he fights in. Lopez, like Manny Pacquiao, Mikey Garcia, and Julian Williams, learned he was not the Godlike indestructible figure he had convinced himself he had to be. Humility has a good taste to it if you embrace it.
Running away from the lightweight division will not answer the question as to why Lopez lost, the factors and causes involved, and how Lopez can improve his skills at 135 pounds. It’s that simple an equation. Muhammad Ali used psychological warfare, Bobby Fischer used it, and now George Kambosos Jr. used it to freakin’ perfection. Lopez has to see it in order to resurrect his abilities in the 2022 “Rumble in the Outback” if it ever occurs. Fair is fair. Kambosos came to Madison Square Garden, so now Lopez should go to Australia. It’s not easy to win down under. Jack Johnson won the world heavyweight title there from Tommy Burns in December 1908 in Sydney Stadium in Sydney when the bout went to the cards after 14 rounds of a scheduled 20 when police halted the contest. It remains the only 14 round heavyweight title bout in ring history.
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