When Keyshawn Davis received a package at his hotel room – bananas and a watermelon that had been sent in a blatantly racist overture – he initially thought the culprit was his opponent, Denys Berinchyk, or someone associated with Berinchyk’s team.
Berinchyk responded via a translator: “I don’t speak English, and I don’t write English. … Some people with bad intentions looking for some hype made that.”
Soon, Teofimo Lopez revealed himself as a possible suspect – and Lopez fit the exact description laid out by Berinchyk. The junior welterweight titleholder posted a video to his Instagram account that showed him eating a banana and laughing while watching a video of Davis saying that the package was racist. Lopez was also wearing a hat labeled “Make Boxing Great Again.”
Whether or not Lopez sent the package, it’s clear that he finds the sentiment behind it amusing and not at all troubling.
This is not the first time Lopez has invoked a banana for racist purposes. In October, when asked if he would prefer to fight Terence Crawford or Gervonta “Tank” Davis, Lopez responded cheerily, “Whichever monkey wants to get the banana. They are gorillas. I’m a lion. I eat them.”
Lopez then said in a video: “I’m not talking about everyone. I’m not talking about people’s color. I’m really just trying to get at these guys so they can at least bark a little bit, so we can make a fight.”
Lopez may not consider himself to have bad intentions, but that doesn’t make his statements any less offensive.
Davis did an about-face in his own Instagram video: “My bad, Team Berinchyk,” he said, indicating he no longer thought they were the culprits behind the package.
“It was smart promotion,” Davis said of Lopez. “He promoted himself very well. But I hope you get a fight off that, because he ain’t fighting me. I don’t want to fight him. He racist.”
Boxing promotions tend to exist in their own reality, a bubble in which fighters can and will do pretty much anything to generate anticipation for their fights and often won’t suffer reputational damage. The scars rarely last.
David Haye crashed a glass bottle on Derek Chisora’s head in 2012, dropping him to the ground, then dropped and stopped Chisora when they fought inside the ring. After the fight, the feelings were all good, and a few years later, Haye began a three-year stint as Chisora’s manager. Time heals all wounds, though the ring heals some of them faster.
Still, there are lines that should not be crossed. Out-and-out racism is one of them, and unlike most insults, it can leave emotional damage that outlasts any number of rounds in the boxing ring. Muhammad Ali repeatedly called Joe Frazier an “Uncle Tom” and a “gorilla,” and Frazier seemed to never fully forgive him after winning their epic first fight, losing their epic third match or witnessing Ali’s Parkinson’s symptoms years later.
Not that promoting a fight would excuse such remarks, but Lopez isn’t in the throes of promotion, or even feuding with Davis. He’s simply leaning into hateful sentiments to draw a reaction. Davis’ response to Lopez was entirely appropriate: Almost any kind of insult can make for an attractive start to a boxing promotion, but not when it’s race-based.
Perhaps other fighters will follow Davis’ example, and in Lopez’s ugly efforts to score a big fight, he just may find himself alienated from those who otherwise might have taken part in them.
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