Promoter Bob Arum is back in fine form comparing Vasily Lomachenko to a young Muhammad Ali as he approaches his unification contest against IBF lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez next Saturday night on October 17th on ESPN.
WBA/WBC/WBO lightweight champion Lomachenko (14-1, 10 KOs) and IBF champion Teofimo (15-0, 12 KOs) will be fighting at ‘The Bubble’ at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Arum has been comparing the two-time Olympic gold medalist Lomachenko to Ali for years now, but he’s revived that talk now that he’s about to fight Teofimo in the biggest fight of his career next Saturday.
It’s hard to compare Lomachenko with Ali because the two fought in different eras. Lomachenko has had the advantage to study a lot more fighters than Ali did with his career.
With all the video that is easy to be seen on Youtube by Lomachenko, he can so many different fighters. Ali learned from watching Sugar Ray Robinson and other great fighters when he was coming up.
Arum compares Lomachenko to Ali
“People don’t remember because they weren’t born then, but when [Muhammad] Ali was in his prime, before the three and a half years when he couldn’t fight, he was an incredible technical fighter,” said Bob Arum to Loma Official TV.
“He had control over distance and how to move in the ring that nobody had ever seen before. Lomachenko has those kinds of skills and more.
“Lomachenko is the best fighter technically that I’ve seen since that early Ali. He is blessed with that one weapon that nobody else in the world has, and that’s his trainer, his father.
“Anatoliy is, in my opinion, the best trainer in the world. The way he trains Vasily, the discipline, and what they do in training is something that, unfortunately, that you don’t see in boxing.
“That is a weapon. When he goes into a fight, he has a game plan of how he will deal with his opponent’s aggression. Mayweather did that, and he was a great defensive fighter.
“But unlike Mayweather, Loma is always looking for a way to destroy his opponents. He doesn’t want an easy fight and to win a decision. He wants a win destroying his opponent, and that’s something that makes him very, very fan-friendly,” said Arum.
Lomachenko is an excellent talent, and we’ll have to see if his technical ability will be enough for him to beat Teofimo. Technical ability can only take a fighter so far.
When you get older, it doesn’t matter how technical you are, you’re going to have problems against a younger fighter with superior hand speed, power, reflexes, and youth. If Lomachenko gets old next Saturday night, he’ll lose and technical skills won’t save him.
Loma’s dad takes notes
“Anatoliy takes down notes from every training session that Loma has so that he can refer back to the notes. He’s a consummate professional trainer.
“I wish I could hire him to teach these other guys what a trainer should do and how he should act and what type of knowledge he should have because he could do a great service for the sport of boxing by imparting his knowledge to these young guys who are now trying to train fighters.
“He’s a lovely guy, and he knows how I respect his ability and everything about him. He devotes himself, and he wants to devote himself to his son, and that’s really his focus of all his attention.
“And he doesn’t want to spread out. He had the opportunity to train [Oleksandr] Gvozdyk, and he didn’t want to do it. I know [Oleksandr] Usyk calls because Usyk and Lomachenko are like brothers, he calls Anatoliy for help in that tournament, cruiserweight tournament.
“Anatoliy makes an exception for Usyk. He has no ambition to do anything else other than to train his son,” said Arum about Lomachenko’s dad/trainer Anatoliy.
Lomachenko owes a lot to his father in the way that he’s guided him since his amateur days. He obviously knows what he’s doing as a coach, and he’s turned Lomachenko into a great fighter.
Arum brings up a good point about how Anatoliy could be a great service to boxing if he taught his coaching methods to other trainers so that they could help fighters become great.
It’s understandable why Anatoliy isn’t passing along his knowledge right now because his son Vasily is still fighting, but perhaps someday when he retires, he might choose to help other coaches.
Loma keeps increasing the risk
“The level of risk for Lomachenko keeps upping itself,” said Mark Kriegel of ESPN. “He’s still to me 126 pounds, and the physical dimensions are not in his favor in this division, and yet this is all the dad’s plan.
“They keep upping the risk. I asked him, ‘Do you know the story of Icarus?’ His dad gives him wings, and he flies too close to the sun, and boom, he goes down.
“He [Lomachenko] said, ‘Yes, I know the story, but if I were Icarus, my dad would get a pair of wings and fly up there with me.’ He has complete faith in what his dad tells him, which is not always the case on the other side with Teofimo. Their conflict is more out there and more palpable.”
“Your wings can get burnt by the son, that’s for sure, but Teofimo’s dad’s son doesn’t have the height and the reach that Luke Campbell had or Jorge Linares, who had the height and the reach and the straight right hands that seemed to bother Lomachenko as he moved up.”
Lomachenko has taken some moderate risks since moving up to 135 in facing Linares, Campbell, and Jose Pedraza, but nothing major.
The risky guys that Lomachenko hasn’t been fighting are Teofimo, Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis, Devin Haney, and Ryan Garcia. Lomachenko has to fight those guys if he wants to be considered the #1 lightweight.
Teofimo doesn’t have to land perfectly
“Lopez is a different type of compact fighter, and physically he doesn’t resemble the kind of lightweight against who Lomachenko, you can’t say struggled, but by his standards, he struggled,” continued Kriegel.
“Teofimo has if nothing else a lot of power and fast twitching,” said Kriegel about Lopez’s punching power and fast-twitch nerve fibers. “This presents its own problem.”
“He certainly does, and Lomachenko has punching power, but it’s not heavy-handed power,” said Kellerman. “It’s, ‘I’m going to hit you with a shot that you don’t see perfectly power.’
“Teofimo doesn’t have to hit you perfectly. He’s got fast twitches, and he’s got heavy-hands. That is a rare and devastating combination.”
Teofimo Lopez has the kind of power where he can stun Lomachenko even when not landing cleanly. You can see Lopez’s power when he’s working out on a speed bag. When he effortlessly throws a shot without his full power, his power is massive.
Lomachenko’s defense is going to have to be the best ever for him to avoid getting knocked out on Saturday. If Loma gets hit 100+ times by Teofimo during the fight, he may not be able to stay upright.
Lopez won’t quit
“He wants to push Lomachenko back,” said Kriegel about Teofimo’s game plan. “And he says, ‘Lomachenko can’t fight to go backward.’ He said something interesting.
“We’ve mostly heard this in the language of heavyweights. He’s an ‘illusion.’ I think what he’s saying with that is, he is a bully. If you demystify his [Lomachenko] reputation, he is just a little guy.
“I don’t believe that, but I think Teofimo comes close to believing that. He wants to push him back, and he wants to bang him to the body. You said something before about Lomachenko and the way he dismantles people.
“It’s not pure power. I think they get disoriented. They become humiliated, and that’s why they quit,” Kriegel said of Lomachenko’s opponents.
They’re throwing punches at the air, they don’t know where he is, they’re getting hit from angles they don’t see, and that’s why they go. I’m not sure that can happen with Teofimo.”
“As a southpaw fighter fighting orthodox fighters, you never see a clash of heads causing a major disruption,” said Kellerman about the southpaw Lomachenko.
“His head can be six inches away from his opponents, no matter how they’re moving because his footwork is so precise. Lopez has his work cut out for him.”
It’s safe to say that we won’t see Teofimo Lopez get flustered enough to where he quits next Saturday against Lomachenko. Teofimo is too intelligent to get discouraged and quit because he’s not competitive.
With Teofimo’s punching power, he’s going to give Lomachenko problems even if he gets dominated by him. \He hits so hard that he’s going to cause Lomachenko pain when he lands, and he could bust up his fast if the contest goes into the deeper rounds.
Lomachenko, 32, is a lot older than the 23-year-old Teofimo, and his age could work against him if the contest goes into the championship rounds.
DiBella talks about UK networks passing on Lomachenko-Lopez
“That’s unfortunate because my favorite fight for the remainder of 2020 and the fight that I want to see the most is Lomachenko and Teofimo,” said promoter Lou DiBella to Secondsout about the problems Bob Arum has had shopping the Lomachenko-Lopez fight to UK networks.
“It’s unfortunate that it’s not going to be on a more widely distributed service in the UK. That being said, I wonder if that really should be Eddie [Hearn of Matchroom Boxing] who should be criticized or it is more the taste of UK boxing fans?
“We bring fighters from all over the world, quality fighters, to the United States, but no one gives a flying f*** about watching them. Nobody.
“Then you’ll have the hipster [Read: ultra-hardcore boxing fan], the small hipster contingent of no-it-all little boxing geeks talking about how great some of the obscure guys, who’s a name you can’t pronounce, but then nobody watches it [in the U.S] because nobody cares.
“But you guys [UK] will take two pedestrian fighters, who are local, and put them in some Commonwealth or local title fight, and there’s huge interest,” said DiBella.
“Now are Eddie and these other people not buying Teofimo vs. Lomachenko for any reason other than they don’t think it’s as attractive as some of the local-yokel stuff they can buy for cheap?”
Hearn said that Lomachenko’s fight against Luke Campbell didn’t bring great ratings last year in the UK.
That means Lomachenko isn’t a popular enough fighter in the UK for it to be worthwhile for one of their networks to spend on purchasing his fight with Teofimo Lopez.
Teofimo is only 23-years-old, and he hasn’t been around long enough for him to win over fans in places like the UK. Further, he fights in the lightweight division, which isn’t a highly popular weight class in the UK.
The popular fighters in England are at welterweight and heavyweight.
No market for Lomachenko vs. Lopez in England
“To each his own. I can’t criticize Hearn not to buy [Lomachenko vs. Teofimo] or these other people not to buy it if they truly believe there’s not going to be any interest and that it’s not money well spent,” DiBella continued.
“I think that’s somewhat reflective of the likes and dislikes and habits of UK boxing fans. You guys are tremendous fans, and there’s nothing wrong with his because I wish boxing in the United States were a little more parochial.
“I wish that we supported our American fighters to a greater extent than we do, and we didn’t offer a platform for fighters from Uzbekistan and every other place on earth.
“There’s nothing wrong with Uzbekistan. There are great fighters from Uzbekistan. But as great as they are, I don’t think Americans want to see a constant diet of Uzbek fighters or Russian fighters or any foreign fighters.
“I wish there was a little bit more parochiality here in the sense that we supported our own a little bit more. My best heavyweight prospect is from Uzbekistan.
[Bakhodir] Jalolov, who I think will be a world champion someday, and I think the Uzbek boxing program is one of the greatest in the world.
“The Russian boxing program is powerful, but Russia is not spending its boxing budget on Americans.”
Eddie Hearn of Matchroom said that he made an offer to Top Rank to show the Lomachenko vs. Teofimo fight in the UK, but it wasn’t enough. He said that he didn’t have a lot of money to layout for the fight because he’s got his own fights to be concerned with.
Sky Sports is in the same situation as Hearn. They’re putting their money into the fights that are taking place in that country.
Lomachenko-Teofimo at the wrong time
The UK is not spending a big portion of its boxing budget on Americans, and we behave in a very different way,” said DiBella. “Maybe that has a little bit to do with the dwindling attractiveness of our sport to the American sports fans.
“We’re not particularly kicking a** with our American fan base, and maybe that’s part of it. So I’m not going to be so critical about the decision not to purchase it [Lomachenko vs. Lopez].
“But it does strike me that it’s a big enough fight that you would have thought one of the bigger players in British boxing would have picked it up.”
“And that’s a completely fair reason not to spend your money there,” said DiBella about the Lomachenko-Teofimo fight taking place at 4:00 in the morning UK time.
“If they can spend less money doing a Sonny Edwards or a Cheese vs. Egg fight or something like that. Look, no one in American wants to see a Cheese vs. Egg fight.
“No one gives a f***. But in the UK, those guys are competitive, and they put on a good match, and many people are interested. It’s two guys with local popularity.
“If they can buy that cheaper and that’s a fight that people would rather see, and by the way, it’s primetime and not four o’clock in the morning, I’m not going to be so critical.
“I do love anytime Eddie has to take some s***. But on this one, I’m not going to be overly critical.”
The most obvious reason why the UK networks like Sky Sports passed up on the idea of buying the broadcast rights for the Lomachenko vs. Lopez fight is the time it would be shown.
With the fight taking place late at 4:00 AM. UK time, it wouldn’t have been seen by enough people for it to be worthwhile showing. If Arum wanted to increase the chances of the Lomachenko-Lopez fight being purchased by a UK network, he could have had it take place 3 or 4 in the evening in the U.S.