How high do you rate Loma ?

Article by Portly Dan

Lomachenko leaving no doubt he is boxing's best

LOS ANGELES -- Pound-for-pound king Vasiliy Lomachenko, the unified lightweight champion, is everything fans should want in a prizefighter.

He fights regularly. Always comes in shape. Always entertains. No ducking, either, because he's willing to fight the best opponents available. And he has skills so supreme and so unusual it's hard to compare him to any other fighter, at least that I can think of in nearly 20 years of covering boxing.


In ESPN's top-10 pound-for-pound poll, Lomachenko garnered nine of the 10 first-place votes, with welterweight titlist Terence Crawford getting one. Near-unanimous agreement on anything in boxing is rare, but that's how good Loma is.

Lomachenko showed off those skills in a very impressive fourth-round knockout of former titlist Anthony Crolla, his mandatory challenger, on Friday night at Staples Center in Los Angeles. Yes, Crolla was a huge underdog, but nobody had so thoroughly dominated him and put him away like Lomachenko did, with one clean right hand to the head that knocked him out face-first. It was such a devastating punch that referee Jack Reiss abandoned the count, because Crolla (34-7-3, 13 KOs), 32, of England, was gone.

We all know that Lomachenko preferred to be in a three-belt unification fight with Richard Commey, as originally planned, but Commey's hand injury made him unavailable. A unification fight with Mikey Garcia, who weeks earlier had lost every single second of a 12-round fight challenging Errol Spence Jr. for a welterweight belt, also was not doable.

What amazes me is that whenever Lomachenko fights, the social media warriors find fault with his opponent and complain about this or that. How can he be No. 1 P4P if he has a loss? Whom has he fought? Oh, please.

Lomachenko (13-1, 10 KOs), 31, the two-time Olympic gold medalist from Ukraine, joined the pro ranks in 2013 as perhaps the greatest amateur fighter ever and needed virtually no pro seasoning. He turned pro in a 10-rounder and was all about making history. He proceeded to set records for fewest fights needed to win a world title (three, a tie), fewest needed to win a title in two divisions (seven) and fewest needed to win a title in three divisions (12), and then he unified lightweight titles in his 13th fight. Of his 14 pro fights, 13 have been world title bouts.

For those who complain that he has a loss: Stop. He fought Orlando Salido, a rugged, rough, massively experienced former two-division titlist in his SECOND pro fight. There are fighters who wouldn't consider fighting somebody as tough as Salido ever, much less in their second fight. In that fight, by the way, Lomachenko came within a whisker of winning a vacant featherweight title but lost a split decision against a Salido who had been stripped of the belt because he didn't make weight, giving him an unfair weight advantage. Salido also spent the entire fight repeatedly fouling Lomachenko with low blows that the referee never did anything about.


I was at that fight in San Antonio and afterward ran into a member of Salido's team. That person said to me, and I am paraphrasing: "Thank goodness we got this guy in his second fight, because after a couple of more, he'll be unbeatable." It turns out that Lomachenko needed only one more fight, because in his third bout, he toyed with fellow Olympian Gary Russell Jr. (24-0 at the time) to win the belt that had been stripped from the overweight Salido.

So when anyone asks, "Whom did Loma ever beat?" the first answer should be Russell, an outstanding fighter who has just that one loss and owns a featherweight title. That question can also be answered with these names: Roman Martinez, Nicholas Walters, Guillermo Rigondeaux, Jorge Linares and Jose Pedraza. Loma has fought more quality opponents in the past few years than some top guys fight in a career.

He drilled Martinez in the fifth round of a 2016 knockout of the year candidate to win a junior lightweight title. It took Garcia eight rounds in Martinez's only other stoppage loss. Walters was an undefeated former featherweight titlist with huge power, considered a serious challenger, but he lost every second of the fight with Lomachenko before quitting after seven rounds. Two-time Olympic gold medalist Rigondeaux, although moving up in weight, was revered by some as a P4P god but was suddenly nobody to them when Loma embarrassed him and made him meekly quit after six rounds.

When Loma moved up to lightweight last May, he KO'd the highly respected Linares in the 10th round despite tearing the labrum in his right shoulder in the second round. When Loma faced Pedraza to unify two belts in December, his shoulder was not 100 percent, but he dropped Pedraza twice in the 11th round and won a wide decision.

Loma doesn't just beat opponents, either. He takes their heart. In four consecutive fights in 2016 and 2017, he made foes quit -- Walters, Jason Sosa, Miguel Marriaga and Rigondeaux -- and dubbed himself "No Mas-chenko."

Loma is not only the No.1 fighter in the world right now, but historically, with only a few exceptions, it's hard to think of anyone in recent decades who would give him a serious fight at 130 or 135 pounds. I think Garcia would be a competitive fight at lightweight, a division in which Loma is undersized. The prime lightweight Shane Mosley would have given him a great fight. And I think Floyd Mayweather, who was probably at his best at junior lightweight and fought only briefly at lightweight, would certainly be a true test, but it would have been a fight that Lomachenko absolutely would have competed in, if not won.

Cue the social media outrage once again.

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And Teofimo