I take issue with your assessment of Lopez’s skill level. His ability to take away angles and space and execute that game plan perfectly speaks to a high level of skill. He was setting up his body shots from the outside perfectly, for one thing.
If you have a huge advantage in strength and size and also power, you can execute a game plan much easier. Loma looked kind of fragile to me at 135. Linares was the only guy at 135 who brought it to Loma and went head to head with him in the pocket and he dropped him. It was a super close fight. I don't think Linares is super skilled and nobody would say Linares is more skilled than Lomachenko but he still was in an even fight with him until he got body shot ko'd. Lopez has some skills. One skill is power, another skill is he knows how to impose his strength and size and another skill is that he's not afraid of getting touched to land his own shots. I wrote "I don't think Lopez is very skilled compared to Loma" btw. And i still think he isn't. Lopez has a different skillset. I can promise you if you put him in with guys like Haney, Davis or Garcia we will see a much more competitive fight than the fight we saw on Saturday Night.
I think Lopez showed he is versatile, which is a big thing. He’s not a one-trick pony. I thought he outboxed Loma, pretty easily and obviously, over the first seven rounds. And Loma, for all his skill, didn’t have any answers. The Matrix glitched. One can have speed and power and size and still be skilled. I think Lopez is on par with Loma skill-wise, it’s just a different set of skills and one that’s more suited to busting up and beating down opponents. He showed enormously high ring IQ IMO, whereas Loma did not (except being smart enough to avoid a fight as much as possible, which is, I guess, a skill unto itself). This was not a case of a brute like George Foreman bullying a smaller, weaker guy. Lopez imposed himself with skill and precision.
Lopez had a lot to do with it, not ring rust. Lopez was in Loma's head before the fight even started. That power and boxing ability broke Loma's focus. Loma fought the first half of the fight like he had been KO'd by Lopez before.
I saw a few things before the fight that made me think Loma could be in for a tough fight. First, where he trained. The house was in a beautiful beach town in a beautiful rented house in California. Second, Loma was tanned like he was chilling at the beach all day drinking fancy cocktails with the umbrella in them. Third, In the locker room of TL, you see Lopez and his wife laughing, dancing and singing, then the camera switches to Loma's dressing room and there is a phone video of gapped tooth gargoyle Usyke. I got a bad feeling when I saw that.
Cool.. And in the ring they weighed? Do some of you have downs? Loma lost to a harder hitting faster fighter, but he looked undersized in there, as he did against Campbell and id like to see him fight at a more optimum weight for him maybe back down at superfeather or feather if he can make it
He isn't built like a tank at lightweight... Teo is built like a tank at lightweight lol You don't have to make excuses for losses.. If you challenge someone and lose... You lost.... So what?
Lopez has skills and a lot of them, he can box, he can brawl, he can counter. He's versatile. But it's more raw, basic stuff compared to Loma. It's no shame though, Lopez is 23 and Loma 30+ with 300+ Amateur fights. It's quite unfair to compare them anyway and it wasn't my intention but we have to compare them right now as they fought a couple of days ago. Lopez isn't as skilled as Loma but he has some tools and advantages over Loma which matter more than pure boxing skills. And so he won fair and square. Nevertheless i can guarantee you that Lopez will have some problems with bigger guys who have the same skillset as Loma. Once Loma was taking risks in the fight, it was much closer. Loma was clearly respecting the Lopez power, size and strength early on. Lopez also showed he has some gas tank issues. I think Haney beats Lopez. I'm quite happy that Loma lost though, the hype ended and now we have a very competitive and exciting Lightweight Division. And we also get some great fights because one of the young guys holding the titles so other young guys like Garcia or Haney want to fight them. We would probably never see Lopez vs. Haney or Lopez vs. Garcia if he lost that fight.
