Teofimo Lopez picks former three-division world champion Vasily Lomachenko to dethrone undisputed lightweight champ Devin Haney on May 20th.
Teofimo, who defeated Lomachenko in 2020 by a twelve round decision, says the only way to defeat him is to go on the “attack,” and he feels that Haney (29-0, 15 KOs) doesn’t possess the “dog in him” to undertake that difficult task.
That is to say, the former unified lightweight champion Teofimo feels that Haney is too soft and lacks the killer instinct to go from the jabbing & clinching style that he’s reliant on to revert to being n aggressor against the two-time Olympic gold medalist Lomachenko.
It would be too much of an abrupt change of Haney’s fundamental style for him to swap out his jab & grab style to transform himself into a seak & destroy, take-no-prisoners approach that he would need to defeat the more technically skilled Lomachenko.
What Haney does have going for him is his mammoth size advantage, as he looks like a full-blown welterweight, bigger than 147-lb champion Terence Crawford, and out of place for the lightweight division.
Lomachenko will need to find a method to deal with Haney’s size because he’s never fought anyone with this much advantage over him. Although Lomachenko has been in with some big fighters, like Teofimo, Jamaine Ortiz, and Masayoshi Nakatani, none of those guys had the size Haney possesses.
“I think I got Vasily Lomachenko winning this fight. The only reason I say it is just the punch IQ that this man throws and what he does, he’ll get you tired,” said Teofimo Lopez to DAZN Boxing about the May 20th fight between the mammoth-sized Devin Haney, defending his undisputed lightweight championship against the much smaller WBC mandatory challenger Vasily Lomachenko.
We haven’t seen Haney get tired in any of his fights during his eight-year professional career, so it’s going to require a lot of pressure on Lomachenko’s part for him to wear him down to thee point where he’s gassing and forced to increase the amount of clinching & moving that he does.
“Even though Devin Haney has the conditioning for it, you must commit. You can’t just play defense with Lomachenko. You can’t. You got to attack, using all means necessary, and I don’t think Devin has got that dog in him to do it,” Teofimo said.
