ANAHEIM, California – Floyd Schofield’s confidence that his fighting future is boundless was reinforced by his emphatic return to the ring Saturday night at Honda Center.
Scoring three knockdowns in the first round, Schofield finished off former 130lbs titleholder Tevin Farmer with a four-punch combination of blows to the head, recording the knockout at 1 minute, 18 seconds.
“I just feel like, with the win, everything is lifted off my shoulders,” Schofield, 22, said in the ring afterward.
Nicknamed “Kid Austin,” Texas’ Schofield quickly knocked down Farmer, 33-9-1 (8 KOs), with a hard right hand to the chin in the bout’s opening seconds, following that with a right hand to the face that dropped him again and had Farmer on wobbly legs before the finishing sequence arrived.
Schofield returned from his February cancellation of a WBC lightweight title fight against Shakur Stevenson in Saudi Arabia, where Schofield’s father claimed his son was poisoned.
Schofield declined to discuss the incident this fight week, saying he was pleased to return and resume his career while ranked as the WBA’s No. 2 contender.
“I wanted to quit boxing. I was depressed. Reading the comments got to me a bit,” Schofield said Saturday. “It made me feel some way that people would switch up on me for one thing.”
He took out the aggravation on Farmer, whom he called “a friend,” and expressed gratitude that the former belt holder was alert after the onslaught.
While Schofield endured his drama, Farmer created one of the most unique niches in the sport’s annals by losing three consecutive bouts and raising his profile through each of them.
The former junior lightweight titlist Farmer produced narrow setbacks versus current IBF lightweight belt holder Raymond Muratalla and then two well-contended scraps versus William Zepeda.
But Saturday was no contest.
Schofield, 19-0 (13 KOs), said he wants another crack at Stevenson should he successfully defend his lightweight title against Zepeda on July 12 in New York.
“Kid Austin has been through a lot,” Schofield promoter Oscar De La Hoya said. “But you just saw the future star at 135[lbs]. He put everyone on notice.”
De La Hoya said he will work to stage Schofield versus the Stevenson-Zepeda winner next.
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.
