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Does Lomachenko Still Have Enough Blue-Book Value to Motor Past Lopez?

In December 2017, a few days prior to Vasiliy Lomachenko’s dominant performance against Guillermo Rigondeaux, who quit on his stool after six rounds at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, noted trainer and ESPN boxing analyst Teddy Atlas was unabashedly exuberant in his assessment of the Ukrainian southpaw’s myriad qualities. To Teddy’s way of thinking, Lomachenko, who went into the Rigondeaux fight with a 9-1 pro record, already had stamped himself as a potential all-time great.
“He’s David Copperfield,” Atlas, referencing the famous magician, gushed of the then-29-year-old Lomachenko. “He makes you think something’s happening over here because that’s what he wants you to think. Look, I had Lomachenko rated in my top 10 pound-for-pound after one pro fight. Yeah, I did, and I know why I did. And I know why I have him No. 1 now. He was born to fight and has been trained to do just that almost from the time he came out of his mother’s womb.
“Mentally, physically, emotionally, technically … he’s the best at all of it, or close to it. It’s no accident he is where he is. He’s the whole package. There are guys you can argue that have better separate pure athletic skill sets, but Lomachenko puts the whole package better than anybody.”
As Loma (14-1, 10 KOs) counts the days down to what arguably is the most compelling, most-anticipated matchup of 2020, Saturday night’s ESPN-televised lightweight unification showdown with 21-year-old firebrand Teofimo Lopez (15-0, 12 KOs) in Las Vegas’ MGM Grand “Bubble,” Atlas’ lofty praise of a seemingly flawless fighter remains unchanged. Well, maybe a little. To Teddy’s way of thinking, predicting the outcome of a fight, any fight, is like shopping for a quality used car. Blue book value matters. A vehicle being considered for purchase might be exquisite on the outside, but before a prospective buyer takes the plunge it always is advisable to check under the hood.
Three 135-pound titles – the WBA and WBO ones held by Lomachenko and the IBF version held by Lopez – will be on the line, as well as the unofficial “franchise” designation conferred upon Loma by the WBC, separate and apart from that sanctioning body’s recognition of Devin Haney as its standard-issue lightweight champion.
There are reasons why Lomachenko, now 32, is a fairly substantial favorite, at -400 according to the Vegas sports books compared to +300 for Lopez. In a poll of so-called experts by one boxing website, Lomachenko was seen as the winner by 18 of 20 respondents. But Atlas sees the matchup as potentially problematic for a still-great practitioner of the pugilistic arts whose heavy wear and tear over a lifetime of highway usage might soon, if not immediately, require a tuneup.
“It’s a dangerous fight for Lomachenko,” Atlas said. “He might have been better off if the fight had happened two years earlier. I don’t judge a fighter’s age chronologically. I judge it the way I judge a car’s age, which is by the mileage on the odometer. A car might be 10 years old, but if it’s got only 5,000 miles on the odometer, to me it’s still a pretty new car. And if you have a car that’s five years old and it has 100,000 miles on the odometer, it’s an old car.
“Lomachenko had, like, 400 amateur fights. (He was an astounding 396-1, with two Olympic gold medals.) He’s only 32, but you don’t know when the effect of all that mileage is going to start to show. I still think he’s the best fighter in the world pound-for-pound. He and (Terence) Crawford are No. 1 and No. 2, or maybe the other way around. Either way you can’t go wrong. Lomachenko is the best technical fighter on the planet. But, at 32, he might be getting to a place where he’s starting to step a tiny bit into the shadows – maybe not enough where everyone’s going to notice it, but I notice a tiny bit of that.
“If that’s true, it makes this fight even more dangerous for him, going up against a young guy who’s so explosive, and not just as a puncher. What I see from this kid is a real belief in himself. He’s nine years younger, he’s naturally bigger, he not only has power but quick feet. He closes the gap the way Manny Pacquiao used to do years ago. Yeah, Pacquiao could punch hard, but the thing that made him especially dangerous was that he could explode in that last couple of feet before the other guy could react. Lopez has that quickness and suddenness.”
It has been suggested by some that Lomachenko-Lopez mirrors the Sept. 14, 2013, pairing of Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Canelo Alvarez, which ended in a 12-round majority decision for Mayweather, although most observers believed “Money” deserved a clear and unanimous nod, and would have gotten it were it not for the widely criticized 114-114 scorecard submitted by judge C.J. Ross. There are those who contend that Canelo, then 23, lost mostly because of his relative youth and inexperience. Atlas believes any attempt to draw parallels between the two megafights is flawed, mostly because of differences between the Canelo that was then and the Lopez that is now.
“The Mayweather-Canelo model is not a fair comparison,” Atlas said, noting that Alvarez, who turned pro at 15, went into that fight with a 42-0-1 record and 30 KOs, making him much more of a finished product than the Lopez who will swap punches with Loma. “And besides, I just don’t think Canelo was ever going to have the foot speed to close the gap against Mayweather before he got countered, and that’s something Lopez does have. Canelo had the hand speed, but he was too slow for Mayweather with his feet. I just think it was never going to be the right time for him to win against Mayweather, because of their styles.”
Lopez’s closing burst from Point A to Point B, along with the power to put away most opponents with a single, well-placed shot, make him the sternest test Lomachenko has ever faced inside the ropes. Then again, the opposite also applies. Can Lopez solve the puzzle that Lomachenko, so adept at flummoxing frustrated foes with nimble moves, quick pivots and an ability to deliver stinging punches from unorthodox angles, always poses?
“He moves like he’s playing three-dimensional chess,” Top Rank founder Bob Arum, who promotes both fighters, once said of Lomachenko. “Watching him fight is like watching a fighter paint a great masterpiece.”
But even great masterpieces can be smudged, and in some of his more recent outings Lomachenko has dropped the occasional hint that even an exquisite artist such as himself can be something less than perfect.
“I think Lomachenko is getting hit a little bit more than he used to,” Atlas said. “He got caught a couple of times by (Luke) Campbell, who is not a big puncher. He got dropped by (Jorge) Linares. If that happens with Lopez, it definitely could be a problem.”
For his part, Lopez – whose nickname is “The Takeover,” which is what he expects to do to the sport of boxing once the world at large sees what he is capable of against Lomachenko – is convinced he will demonstrate that even the man of many moves can be put down and out if caught just so.
“He’s on the way out,” Lopez said in an interview with DAZN. “He really thinks he is a god in this sport. I don’t like him and I have my reasons why. I don’t like the way he carries himself. I will beat up Lomachenko and take his belts. Simply as that.
“I’m not the type of fighter to just talk my stuff and not back it up. If I hit him like Linares did, he won’t get up. If he gets knocked down by me, it’s over.”
Simple is as simple does, and Lomachenko has heard past victims talk trash and then have their mouths taped shut inside the ropes. He praised Lopez as an “excellent puncher” with a “high boxing IQ,” but he has heard all the implied threats before and considers them meaningless unless or until the boastful opponent backs up the bluster with victorious action.
“I heard this a lot of times from a lot of boxers,” Lomachenko said of the latest verbal assault directed at him. “But then you come in the ring, and you forget your words. You forget your promise. You just try boxing, you just try fighting. For me, it’s just words.
“Teofimo Lopez can talk all he wants. He’s very good at talking. He has done nothing but say my name for the past two years. Good for Teofimo. When we fight he will eat my punches and his words.”
Now, about the words uttered two years ago that caused Lopez and his trainer-father, Teofimo Sr., to make the conquest of Lomachenko something akin to a holy quest. Appearing on the same Dec. 8, 2018, card at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, Loma outpointed Jose Pedraza en route to a 12-round, unanimous decision to retain his WBA lightweight title while annexing Pedraza’s WBO belt. The Brooklyn-born Lopez, meanwhile, might have stolen the show by starching veteran Mason Menard only 44 seconds into round one. Two nights earlier, the elder Lopez, apparently inebriated, confronted Lomachenko in the hotel where both fighters were staying and told him that at some point his son would “kick your ass.”
Egos, not surprisingly, were involved, and feelings bruised, with a fight that probably was predestined to happen anyway someday now coated with genuine undertones of animosity. For his part, Teofimo Lopez sided with his father in the belief that Lomachenko and his trainer-father, Anatoly Lomachenko, were guilty of being arrogant and dismissive.
Lomachenko is almost always imperturbable, a craftsman not disposed to outwardly showing emotion, but Lopez might be more prone to venting any anger he could be harboring on fight night. And that, Atlas said, likely would be to Loma’s advantage.
“I don’t think it can be a plus for Lopez,” Atlas said of fighters who are more concerned with inflicting as much punishment as possible on their opponent for personal reasons than with executing a fight plan. “It makes you more reckless and more prone to think less and be careless. I think that factor in overplayed in most cases and I disregard it in this instance, but who knows?”
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Arne’s Almanac: The First Boxing Writers Assoc. of America Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New York’s Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.
The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of America’s largest cities.
In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.
The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writers’ dinner:
New York Times
New York News
New York World
New York Sun
New York Journal
New York Post
New York Mirror
New York Telegram
New York Graphic
New York Herald Tribune
Brooklyn Eagle
Brooklyn Times
Brooklyn Standard Union
Brooklyn Citizen
Bronx Home News
This isn’t a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.
Back then, the event’s organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasn’t a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.
The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New York’s charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.
Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. “Boxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,” said hizzoner. “So I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesn’t belong in this town or in your game.” (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)
Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.
Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldn’t have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the city’s top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.
There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew “more than 200” according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.
In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.
There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.
The winnowing of New York’s newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischer’s baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.
Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.
The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a “talkie” has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.
The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.
Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.
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Gabriela Fundora KOs Marilyn Badillo and Perez Upsets Conwell in Oceanside

It was just a numbers game for Gabriela Fundora and despite Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo’s elusive tactics it took the champion one punch to end the fight and retain her undisputed flyweight world title by knockout on Saturday.
Will it be her last flyweight defense?
Though Fundora (16-0, 8 KOs) fired dozens of misses, a single punch found Badillo (19-1-1, 3 KOs) and ended her undefeated career and first attempt at a world title at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, California.
Fundora, however, proves unbeatable at flyweight.
The champion entered the arena as the headliner for the Golden Boy Promotion show and stepped through the ropes with every physical advantage possible, including power.
Mexico’s Badillo was a midget compared to Fundora but proved to be as elusive as a butterfly in a menagerie for the first six rounds. As the six-inch taller Fundora connected on one punch for every dozen thrown, that single punch was a deadly reminder.
Badillo tried ducking low and slipping to the left while countering with slashing uppercuts, she found little success. She did find the body a solid target but the blows proved to be useless. And when Badillo clinched, that proved more erroneous as Fundora belted her rapidly during the tie-ups.
“She was kind of doing her ducking thing,” said Fundora describing Badillo’s defensive tactics. “I just put the pressure on. It was just like a train. We didn’t give her that break.”
The Mexican fighter tried valiantly with various maneuvers. None proved even slightly successful. Fundora remained poised and under control as she stalked the challenger.
In the seventh round Badillo seemed to take a stand and try to slug it out with Fundora. She quickly was lit up by rapid left crosses and down she went at 1:44 of the seventh round. The Mexican fighter’s corner wisely waved off the fight and referee Rudy Barragan stopped the fight and held the dazed Badillo upright.
Once again Fundora remained champion by knockout. The only question now is will she move up to super flyweight or bantamweight to challenge the bigger girls.
Perez Beats Conwell.
Mexico’s Jorge “Chino” Perez (33-4, 26 KOs) upset Charles Conwell (21-1, 15 KOs) to win by split decision after 12 rounds in their super welterweight showdown.
It was a match that paired two hard-hitting fighters whose ledgers brimmed with knockouts, but neither was able to score a knockdown against each other.
Neither fighter moved backward. It was full steam ahead with Conwell proving successful to the body and head with left hooks and Perez connecting with rights to the head and body. It was difficult to differentiate the winner.
Though Conwell seemed to be the superior defensive fighter and more accurate, two judges preferred Perez’s busier style. They gave the fight to Perez by 115-113 scores with the dissenter favoring Conwell by the same margin.
It was Conwell’s first pro loss. Maybe it will open doors for more opportunities.
Other Bouts
Tristan Kalkreuth (15-1) managed to pass a serious heat check by unanimous decision against former contender Felix Valera (24-8) after a 10-round back-and-forth heavyweight fight.
It was very close.
Kalkreuth is one of those fighters that possess all the physical tools including youth and size but never seems to be able to show it. Once again he edged past another foe but at least this time he faced an experienced fighter in Valera.
Valera had his moments especially in the middle of the 10-round fight but slowed down during the last three rounds.
One major asset for Kalkreuth was his chin. He got caught but still motored past the clever Valera. After 10 rounds two judges saw it 99-91 and one other judge 97-93 all for Kalkreuth.
Highly-rated prospect Ruslan Abdullaev (2-0) blasted past dangerous Jino Rodrigo (13- 5-2) in an eight round super lightweight fight. He nearly stopped the very tough Rodrigo in the last two rounds and won by unanimous decision.
Abdullaev is trained by Joel and Antonio Diaz in Indio.
Bakersfield prospect Joel Iriarte (7-0, 7 KOs) needed only 1:44 to knock out Puerto Rico’s Marcos Jimenez (25-12) in a welterweight bout.
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‘Krusher’ Kovalev Exits on a Winning Note: TKOs Artur Mann in his ‘Farewell Fight’

At his peak, former three-time world light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev ranked high on everyone’s pound-for-pound list. Now 42 years old – he turned 42 earlier this month – Kovalev has been largely inactive in recent years, but last night he returned to the ring in his hometown of Chelyabinsk, Russia, and rose to the occasion in what was billed as his farewell fight, stopping Artur Mann in the seventh frame.
Kovalev hit his peak during his first run as a world title-holder. He was 30-0-1 (26 KOs) entering first match with Andre Ward, a mark that included a 9-0 mark in world title fights. The only blemish on his record was a draw that could have been ruled a no-contest (journeyman Grover Young was unfit to continue after Kovalev knocked down in the second round what with was deemed an illegal rabbit punch). Among those nine wins were two stoppages of dangerous Haitian-Canadian campaigner Jean Pascal and a 12-round shutout over Bernard Hopkins.
Kovalev’s stature was not diminished by his loss to the undefeated Ward. All three judges had it 114-113, but the general feeling among the ringside press was that Sergey nicked it.
The rematch was also somewhat controversial. Referee Tony Weeks, who halted the match in the eighth stanza with Kovalev sitting on the lower strand of ropes, was accused of letting Ward get away with a series of low blows, including the first punch of a three-punch series of body shots that culminated in the stoppage. Sergey was wobbled by a punch to the head earlier in the round and was showing signs of fatigue, but he was still in the fight. Respected judge Steve Weisfeld had him up by three points through the completed rounds.
Sergey Kovalev was never the same after his second loss to Andre Ward, albeit he recaptured a piece of the 175-pound title twice, demolishing Vyacheslav Shabranskyy for the vacant WBO belt after Ward announced his retirement and then avenging a loss to Eleider Alvarez (TKO by 7) with a comprehensive win on points in their rematch.
Kovalev’s days as a title-holder ended on Nov. 2, 2019 when Canelo Alvarez, moving up two weight classes to pursue a title in a fourth weight division, stopped him in the 11th round, terminating what had been a relatively even fight with a hellacious left-right combination that left Krusher so discombobulated that a count was superfluous.
That fight went head-to-head with a UFC fight in New York City. DAZN, to their everlasting discredit, opted to delay the start of Canelo-Kovalev until the main event of the UFC fight was finished. The delay lasted more than an hour and Kovalev would say that he lost his psychological edge during the wait.
Kovalev had two fights in the cruiserweight class between his setback to Canelo and last night’s presumptive swan song. He outpointed Tervel Pulev in Los Angeles and lost a 10-round decision to unheralded Robin Sirwan Safar in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Artur Mann, a former world title challenger – he was stopped in three rounds by Mairis Briedis in 2021 when Briedis was recognized as the top cruiserweight in the world – was unexceptional, but the 34-year-old German, born in Kazakhstan, wasn’t chopped liver either, and Kovalev’s stoppage of him will redound well to the Russian when he becomes eligible for the Boxing Hall of Fame.
Krusher almost ended the fight in the second round. He knocked Mann down hard with a short left hand and seemingly scored another knockdown before the round was over (but it was ruled a slip). Mann barely survived the round.
In the next round, a punch left Mann with a bad cut on his right eyelid, but the German came to fight and rounds three, four and five were competitive.
Kovalev had a good sixth round although there were indications that he was tiring. But in the seventh he got a second wind and unleashed a right-left combination that rolled back the clock to the days when he was one of the sport’s most feared punchers. Mann went down hard and as he staggered to his feet, his corner signaled that the fight should be stopped and the referee complied. The official time was 0:49 of round seven. It was the 30th KO for Kovalev who advanced his record to 36-5-1.
Addendum: History informs us that Farewell Fights have a habit of becoming redundant, by which we mean that boxers often get the itch to fight again after calling it quits. Have we seen the last of Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev? We woudn’t bet on it.
The complete Kovalev-Mann fight card was live-streamed on the Boxing News youtube channel.
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