A lot of people have been saying that Loma has been undersized when he fought up at 135. How does his legacy look if he had decided to just stay at 130? Would he have stayed dominant for awhile and be more highly regarded as a P4P fighter in your opinion?
Makes me wonder if Loma would be pressured to move up to 135 eventually if he stayed at 130 for another 2 years. I have no doubt that he would have continued dominating 130 and toyed with guys like Berchelt. And we could have seen him face an up and coming Tank Davis, I think Loma would have beaten him thoroughly at the time. It would have been nice if Loma decided not to move on forward another weight class so soon, but I understand that he was chasing for history and legacy. Loma still managed to make history. That's something that I will always respect him for, he's always wanting to challenge himself and not take the easy route.
He would have one loss which shouldn't be a loss and only is due to corruption and he would be the current P4P king and rule whatever division he campaigned in with an iron rod. He's lost once in his entire life, 423 fights amateur and pro combined, to someone who was roughly his size and I think they were probably bigger, and he avenged it times 2. Two of his other 3 losses came against opponents who weighed 2 divisions more than him or 4 in Haney's case and 2 of them should not be losses. He is supernaturally good against fighters his own size and imagine he's fighting ones who he weighs 2-3 or even 4 divisions more than? No one even thinks of it from that perspective. Imagine how much more incredible Loma would look if he was bigger and heavier or much bigger and heavier than his opponents like many other top fighters of today are than theirs and he wasn't constantly giving away a lot or a huge amount of reach too.
Combine the best aspects and strengths of both Loma and Usyk and you'd get a near perfect fighter IMO.
Yes for sure. People including myself praise Usyk's chin, and rightly so, but Loma's chin and toughness are aspects of his people rarely mention. He's got a great chin himself and is very physically strong for his size. Sure he has an incredible defence, but he's fought lots of very big and very big punchers and many of them bigger, much bigger or way bigger than him and obviously when you tiny for the division and are facing fighters who are huge or gigantic for the weight and weigh 1.5, 2, 3 or even 4 divisions more than you power is magnified.
Agreed with what you said. Now that I think about it, since Loma has had desires to become undisputed he really could have made things much easier on himself by sticking around 130 rather than move up in weight. He really could have wiped out that division clean, especially since his power was explosive before he moved to 135.
If Loma had stayed at 130 we may have seen him fight Tank, Tevin Farmer, Jamal Herring and possibly Shakur Stevenson. Those could have been some great fights.
I wish he had but not as much as I wish he'd not based himself in the US. He should come over to the UK and became a favourite over here and only fought in the US once or twice. He would've been treated much better that's for sure and not been despised with a vengeance by huge factions of tribalistic fans like he is in the US.