FanSided’s 2021 boxing awards and greatest performances

2021 Upset of the Year: George Kambosos Jr. defeats Teofimo Lopez via split decision

You could call 2021 the year of the upset in boxing. There were a lot of matchups to choose from in this category, including Sandor Martin’s win over Mikey Garcia, Mauricio Lara’s TKO over Josh Warrington, and Alycia Baumgardner’s finish of Terri Harper.

Despite all of the competition, George Kambosos Jr.’s split decision victory over Teofimo Lopez to become the new unified lightweight champion ran away with our Upset of the Year honors.

For a time, it looked like this fight might never come to fruition.

Kambosos was Lopez’s mandatory challenger. Triller threw a curveball by winning a high purse bid over Lopez’s promoter Top Rank. Triller moved the fight date many times before finally abandoning it altogether.

Matchroom came in to save the day, and the fight took place at The Theater in Madison Square Garden in November.

At one point, Kambosos was a -1500 underdog, but those odds shifted in round 1 after Kambosos knocked down Lopez. He took the fight to Lopez, but Lopez found a second wind later in the war and dropped Kambosos in round 10, but it wasn’t enough to keep his titles.

Kambosos and Lopez brutalized each other in a grueling battle, but Kambosos was the victor who rearranged the lightweight power structure and possibly banished Lopez from the division.

“Perhaps it was somewhat less surprising than Garcia losing to an unheralded Spaniard, but Kambosos victory over the young and rising undisputed champion had something that bout didn’t have: high stakes and high drama,” said FanSided’s Griffin Hill.

“Lopez is the king of s**t talking and would’ve thought he would pull it off like he did against Lomachenko,” said The Ring’s Cynthia Conte. “But Kambosos backed up his s**t talk with his hands and battered the s**t out of Lopez.”