Does anyone know anything about this guy? I see him as one of the four guys Pernell Whitaker fought in 1989. Was Lomeli any good or was he just a basic tuneup between major fights? I see that it was for the IBF title so he was probably Top 15.
Lomeli was pretty basic, and who lacked speed at the highest level...but he was decent enough. Hard-punching Mexican who fought out of Chicago, who defeated fellow undefeated prospect John Duplessis on national TV to earn a title shot at Whitaker. He was dominated and ultimately obliterated, but was able to wobble Pernell at one point before getting stopped.
Louie was considered potentially promising at one point among many others but ultimately he fell short of what some thought him capable of. I remember some noise early on about his power.
I thought he was a stronger contender initially than he turned out to be. He stopped the very tough Sal Cenicola before the Duplessis fight and that was pretty impressive. He got some hype and looked the part, but I watched the Whittaker fight awhile back and he was absolutely blasted out in brutal fashion. Hard to rebuild from that kind of knockout.
Lomeli came at the end of the era when state titles were still kind of a big deal. He was the best lightweight from Illinois around the time. Before him, in Illinois, there was Oliver McCall and Danell Nicholson. At cruiserweight, there was Lee Roy Murphy, Alfonso Ratliff and Craig Bodzianowski. If you were a state champion, or you were considered the best fighter in your state, you could sometimes get a world title shot, see guys like Chuck Wepner and Scott Frank, who were both New Jersey state champ. Then the WBC, WBA, IBF, etc. started making a lot of smaller regional titles, and fighters tended to go after those instead and state titles because the regional titles usually guaranteed a world ranking of some sort. Lomeli was a good fighter. The best fighters in a state or the state champs back then were on the level of most domestic champs in the UK in that era. Good enough to maybe get a title shot. One or two maybe good enough to win one. But most were cannon fodder for the top guys.
I remember an interview he gave to KO magazine where he stated that locals didnt like black people in his neighbourhood because they steal hubcaps (or something lame like that). I suspect this pissed Pernell Whittaker off because he rarely sought the knockout like he did in that fight. I also always thought Lomeli was Italian-American, but he is of Mexican descent according to this forum.
Good post on explaining how smaller titles used to be — lightweight champ of California was probably more prestigious, or on par with, lightweight champ of Mexico in the day. If a state had a good fight scene, being champ of your division in that state meant something. And even in lesser states, if you could bill a fight as being for the Alabama or Louisiana or Colorado state title, you had a good local club show main event. There were also regional titles — Mid-South, Pacific Northwest and the likes. They were just kind of loosely confederated by promoters from the region (as opposed to some sanctioning body) ... they would agree that Joe Blow from Memphis against Fred Smith from Arkansas or Mississippi was worthy of a Mid-South belt and the winner would defend it at home or maybe even take it on the road for a defense and get an extra few hundred bucks for putting it on the line. And mostly the better fighters from whatever region were the ones who held those straps so they did identify the top guys from a geographic area.
