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

Published

4 years ago

October 14, 2020

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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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Fast-Rising Omar Trinidad KOs Slavinskyi at the Commerce Casino

Published

3 hours ago

July 26, 2024

David A. Avila

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East L.A.’s Omar Trinidad knocked out Ukraine’s Viktor Slavinskyi to retain the WBC Continental America’s featherweight title on Friday in a strategic but entertaining contest.

Fighting in front of frenzied crowd of supporters Trinidad (16-0-1, 13 KOs) defeated southpaw Slavinskyi (15-3-1, 7 KOs) with a measured and careful attack at the Commerce Casino in Commerce, Calif.

Fans familiar with Trinidad (pictured over the right shoulder of promoter Tom Loeffler) are familiar with his aggressive pressure fighting style, but the Boyle Heights pugilist took a careful approach against Slavinskyi. Instead of a pounding assault Trinidad kept the fight at a distance and used his reach advantage to perfection.

It was reminiscent of long-armed fighters of the past like the late great Mando Ramos of the late 1960s who could punch or box. Pick your poison.

Trinidad employed a constant jab and well-placed counter shots. The right hand, in particular, was especially effective.

“I couldn’t miss with the right,” said Trinidad

For seven rounds Trinidad dominated with counter-punching. Then, Slavinskyi increased the pressure and forced the East L.A. fighter to come along. He did.

“If I could get a knockout I’d put him in the blender,” Trinidad said.

From the eighth round until the end Trinidad engaged in his usual fast and furious style and was especially effective with uppercuts in ninth round. Slavinskyi walked into a right uppercut that sent him across the ring and into the ropes. Referee Ray Corona ruled it a knockdown.

In the final round Trinidad wasted no time in looking to unload with an uppercut and Slavinskyi walked into a right hand version. There was no escape as he was ruled unable to continue by Corona at 2:31 of the 10^th and final round.

Trinidad keeps the title.

“The left hook and right uppercut was the money shot,” said Trinidad. “It was well-timed and it was a money shot.”

Welterweights

A fight between buddies from the same Armenian amateur team saw Aram Amirkhanyun (16-0-1, 4 KOs) defeat Gor Yeritsyan (18-1, 14 KOs) by split decision after 10 hard-fought rounds in a welterweight fight for a regional title.

The judges scored it 96-94 Yeritsyan and 96-94 twice for Amirkhanyun. No knockdowns were scored.

Iyana “Right Hook Roxy” Verduzco (2-0) proved that adapting into a pro style was not a problem in soundly defeating Pittsburgh’s Colleen Davis (3-2-1) after six featherweight rounds. Her best weapon was accuracy.

Verduzco, who is trained by her mother Gloria Alvarado, had been one of the most decorated amateur boxers for many years. In just her second pro fight the tell-tale signs of the amateur style were gone.

While the taller Davis circled rapidly to the left, Verduzco calmly waited for the openings and blasted away with pinpoint shots to the body and head. Her right hook was deadly accurate and the left found openings whenever they appeared.

Davis was able to land rights but just not enough to offset the incoming fire from the Southern California fighter. After six rounds all three judges scored it 60-54 for Verduzco.

In a firefight, Abel Mejia (5-0, 4 KOs) barely survived a second round knockdown against Tijuana’s rugged Jose Correa (6-10, 4 KOs) and rallied to remain relevant in the super featherweight match. In the fourth and final round Mejia beat Correa to the punch with a left hook that knocked out the tough Mexican challenger at 55 seconds as referee Ray Corona stopped the fight.

A super featherweight fight saw Hawaii’s Jaybrio Pe Benito (5-0, 4 KOs) power past Texan Michael Land (1-5-1) for a knockout win at 1:30 of the second round. Benito was too powerful and busy for Land who tried but was unable to slow down the assault.

Photo credit: Lina Baker

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

Published

1 day ago

July 25, 2024

David A. Avila

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

East Los Angeles has long been a haven for some of the best fighters around if you can keep them out of trouble. For every Oscar De La Hoya or Seniesa Estrada there are thousands derailed by crime, drugs or drinking.

Boxing has always been a favorite sport of East L.A. Every family has an uncle or two who boxes.

On Friday, 360 Promotions’ Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) fights Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1) in the main event at Commerce Casino, in Commerce, CA. UFC Fight Pass will stream the fight card.

The City of Commerce used to be part of East L.A. until 1960 when it incorporated. It’s still considered to be part of East Los Angeles, but informally.

Plenty of fighters come out of East L.A. but few make it all the way like De La Hoya and Estrada. Will Trinidad be the one?

The first world champion from East L.A. or “East Los” as some call it, was Solly Garcia Smith back in the late 1800s. Others were Richie Lemos, Art Frias and Joey Olivo. There is also 1984 Olympic gold medalist Paul Gonzalez.

Once again 360 Promotions brings its popular brand of fights to the area. On this fight card includes two female bouts. One features Roxy Verduzco (1-0) the former amateur star fighting Colleen Davis (3-1-1) in a featherweight fight.

All that action takes place on Friday.

Elite Boxing

The next day, also in East L.A., Elite Boxing stages another boxing card at Salesian High School located at 960 S. Soto Street in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles.

Elite Boxing has promoted several successful boxing cards at the Catholic high school grounds. The area is saturated by many of the best eateries in Los Angeles. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out yourself and grab some of that delicious food.

Boxing has long been a favorite sport of anyone who lives in East L.A. It’s a fight town equal to Philadelphia, Brooklyn or Detroit. There’s something different about the area. For more than 100 years some of the best fighters continue to come out of its boxing gyms. Some will be performing on these club shows.

For tickets or information go to www.eliteboxingusa.com

Claressa Shields in Detroit

Speaking of fight towns, pound-for-pound best Claressa Shields who won two Olympic Gold Medals in boxing, moves up another weight division to tackle the WBC heavyweight world champion Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse on Saturday, July 27, at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan.

DAZN will stream the heavy-duty fight card.

Shields (14-0) cleaned out the super welterweight, middleweight and super middleweight divisions and now wants to add the big girls to her conquests. She will be facing Canada’s Lepage-Joanisse (7-1) who holds the WBC belt.

The last time Shields gloved up was more than a year ago when she fought Maricela Cornejo. Don’t blame Shields. She loves to fight. She loves to win. The last time Shields lost a fight was in the amateurs and that was three presidential administrations ago.

Shields doesn’t lose.

I wonder if Las Vegas even takes bets on her fights?

The only fight she may have been an underdog was against Savannah Marshall who was the last opponent to defeat her. And that was in 2012 in China. When they met as pros two years ago, Shields avenged her loss with a blistering attack.

Don’t get Shields mad.

Perhaps her toughest foe as a pro was in her pro debut when she clashed with Franchon Crews-Dezurn in Las Vegas. It was four rounds of fists and fury as the two pounded each other on the undercard of Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev in November 2016.

That was a ferocious debut for both female pugilists.

Assisting Shields on this fight card will be several intriguing male bouts. One guy you should pay special attention is Tito Mercado (15-0, 14 KOs) a super lightweight prospect from Pomona, California.

Many excellent fighters have come out of Pomona including Sugar Shane Mosley, Shane Mosley Jr., Alberto Davila and Richie Sandoval who just passed away this week.

Sandoval was best known for his 15-round war with Philadelphia’s Jeff Chandler for the bantamweight world title in 1984. Read the story by Arne K. Lang on this link: https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/featured-boxing-articles-boxing-news-videos-rankings-and-results/81467-former-world-bantamweight-champion-richie-sandoval-passes-away-at-age-63 .

Fights to Watch

Fri. UFC Fight Pass 7 p.m. Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) vs Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1).

Sat. ESPN+ 12:30 p.m. Joe Joyce (16-2) vs Derek Chisora (34-13).

Sat. DAZN 3 p.m. Claressa Shields (14-0) vs Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse (7-1), Michel Rivera (25-1) vs Hugo Roldan (22-2-1); Tito Mercado (15-0) vs Hector Sarmiento (21-2).

Omar Trinidad photo by Lina Baker

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Arne’s Almanac: Jake Paul and Women’s Boxing, a Curmudgeon’s Take

Published

3 days ago

July 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Jake Paul can fight more than a little. The view from here is that he would make it interesting against any fringe contender in the cruiserweight division. However, Jake’s boxing acumen pales when paired against his skill as a flim-flam artist.

Jake brought a 9-1 record into last weekend’s bout with Mike Perry. As noted by boxing writer Paul Magno, Jake’s previous opponents consisted of “a You Tuber, a retired NBA star, five retired MMA stars, a part-time boxer/reality TV star, and two undersized and inactive fall-guy boxers.”

Mike Perry, a 32-year-old Floridian, was undefeated (6-0, 3 KOs) as a bare-knuckle boxer after forging a 14-8 record in UFC bouts. In pre-fight blurbs, Perry was billed as the baddest bare knuckle boxer of all time, but against Jake Paul he proved to have very unrefined skills as a conventional boxer which Team Paul undoubtedly knew all along. Perry lasted into the eighth round in a one-sided fight that could have been stopped a lot sooner.

Jake Paul is both a boxer and a promoter. As a promoter, he handles Amanda Serrano, one of the greatest female boxers in history. That makes him the person most responsible (because the buck stops with him) for the wretched mismatch in last Saturday’s co-feature, the bout between Serrano and Stevie Morgan.

Morgan, who took up boxing two years ago at age 33, brought a 14-1 record. Nicknamed the Sledgehammer, she had won 13 of her 14 wins by knockout, eight in the opening round. However, although she resides in Florida, all but one of those 13 knockouts happened in Colombia.

“We found that in Colombia there were just more opportunities for women’s boxing than in the United States,” she told a prominent boxing writer whose name we won’t mention.

The truth is that, for some folks, Colombia is the boxing equivalent of a feeder lot for livestock, a place where a boxer can go to fatten their record. The opportunities there were no greater than in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1995. It was there that Peter McNeeley prepped for his match with Mike Tyson with a 6-second knockout of professional punching bag Frankie Hines. (Six seconds? So it would be written although no one seems to have been there to witness it.)

Serrano vs Morgan was understood to be a stay-busy fight for Amanda whose rematch with Katie Taylor was postponed until November. Stevie Morgan, to her credit, answered the bell for the second round whereas others in her situation would have remained on the stool and invented an injury to rationalize it. Thirty-eight seconds later it was all over and Ms. Morgan was free to go home and use her sledgehammer to do some light dusting.

The Paul-Perry and Serrano-Morgan fights played out in a sold-out arena in Tampa before an estimated 17,000. Those without a DAZN subscription paid $64.95 for the livestream. Paul’s next promotion, where he will touch gloves with 58-year-old Mike Tyson (unless Iron Mike pulls a Joe Biden and pulls out; a capital idea) with Serrano-Taylor II the semi-main, will almost certainly rake in more money than any other boxing promotion this year.

Asked his opinion of so-called crossover boxing by a reporter for a college newspaper, the venerable boxing promoter Bob Arum said, “It’s not my bag but folks who don’t like it shouldn’t get too worked up over it because no one is stealing from anybody.” True enough, but for some of us, the phenomenon is distressing.

—

The next big women’s fight happens Saturday in Detroit where Claressa Shields seeks a world title in a third weight class against WBC heavyweight belt-holder Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse.

A two-time Olympic gold medalist, undefeated in 14 fights as a pro, Shields is very good, arguably the best female boxer of her generation which makes her, arguably, the best female boxer of all time. But turning away Lepage-Joanisse (7-1, 2 KOs) won’t elevate her stature in our eyes.

Purportedly 17-4 as an amateur, the Canadian won her title in her second crack at it. Back in August of 2017, she challenged Cancun’s Alejandra Jimenez in Cancun and was stopped in the third round. Entering the bout, Lepage-Joanisse was 3-0 as a pro and had never fought a match slated for more than four rounds.

Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse

True, on the women’s side, the heavyweight bracket is a very small pod. A sanctioning body has to make concessions to harness a sanctioning fee. Nonetheless, how absurd that a woman who had answered the bell for only 11 rounds would be deemed qualified to compete for a world title. (FYI: Alejandra Jimenez was purportedly born a man. She left the sport with a 12-0-1 record after her win over Franchon Crews Dazurn was changed to a no-contest when she tested positive for the banned steroid stanozolol.)

Following her defeat to Jimenez, Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse, now 29 years old, was out of action for six-and-a-half years. When she returned, she was still a heavyweight, but a much slender heavyweight. She carried 231 pounds for Jimenez. In her most recent bout where she captured the vacant WBC title with a split decision over Argentina’s Abril Argentina Vidal, she clocked in at 173 ¼. (On the distaff side, there’s no uniformity among the various sanctioning bodies as to what constitutes a heavyweight.)

Claressa Shields doesn’t need Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse to reinforce her credentials as a future Hall of Famer. She made the cut a long time ago.

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