Luis Alberto Lopez was on a rampage before he locked horns with Angelo Leo. He had made it a habit of knocking out his opponents. Yeison Vargas, Michael Conlan, and Isaac Lowe have all been his victims. And he planned to do the same to El Chinito when they fought tonight at the Tingley Coliseum in Albuquerque.

However, things ended quite differently! The fight started pretty evenly matched, but things quickly took a dramatic turn by the tenth round. Angelo Leo knocked out Venado Lopez with a thunderous left hook in the 10th round of their twelve-round bout for Lopez’s IBF featherweight title, something Lopez never thought would happen.

Luis Alberto Lopez’s prediction fails

Ahead of their bout, Lopez was quoted by Sky Sports stating, “If we can end the fight early, we’ll do that. Either way, I’m coming back home as a world champion.” While his prediction for his fight failed, he did say, “We expect the best version of him, and it will be a war,” which it was. Lopez is often compared to legendary featherweight star Naseem Hamed, so there were a lot of eyes on the fight from the beginning.

Boxing journalist and insider Dan Rafael shared the update with his followers on X, noting, “Angelo Leo flattens Luis Alberto Lopez with one shot in rd 10 to win the IBF featherweight title in front of his hometown. KO of the year candidate! Whoa.” Seeing this battle unfold, Rolly Romero, Bam Rodriguez, and others soon joined the fray to share their thoughts on the vicious knockout.

Angelo Leo: Knockout of the Year nominee

Super lightweight boxer from Las Vegas, Rolly Romero, who is slated to face Manuel Jaimes on September 14th, wrote, “Angelo Leo just murdered him”, adding in a later tweet, “Angelo Leo knockout of the year for sure”. Meanwhile, the WBC super flyweight champion and a knockout artist himself, Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez, who is coming off a spectacular win over Juan Francisco Estrada, could only describe the brutal action with one word, “DAYUM”.

Reacting to Leo’s win, the WBC lightweight champion Shakur Stevenson, who just defeated Artem Harutyunyan last month, wrote, “Dude keep hitting in the back of the head.” As it turns out, he also made some cash from the fight. He later wrote, “I just won 12k cause I knew he was going to knock that ni**a out.”

Even American actress and Oscar nominee Rosie Parez joined the conversation, writing, “Another tough brutal fight. Lots of back of the  punching too.”

It seems Angelo Leo has managed to stop Luis Alberto Lopez’s rampage to record his fifth consecutive win since he suffered his first career defeat at the hands of Stephen Fulton in January 2021. And now that he is the IBF champion, he could challenge WBC champion, Rey Vargas, WBA champion Nick Ball, or WBO champion Rafael Espinoza to unify the title. Who do you think he should fight next?