As we like to ask in California when an earthquake strikes: Did you feel that one?
Boxing’s Richter scale went nuts Saturday night when 23-year-old Teofimo Lopez became the unified lightweight champion of the world with an aggressive, unbending unanimous-decision triumph over pound-for-pound mainstay Vasiliy Lomachenko.
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Strangely there’s no rematch clause in place, and the fact that Brooklyn’s Lopez has for so long suffered in trimming to 135 pounds could prompt him to flee the division without ever making a four-belt defense.
Still, boxing has a freshly charged electric personality as an unbeaten champion. It’s exactly what was needed for a sport described as “niche” when such personalities are lacking.
What both Lopez and Lomachenko will do next is riveting theater. We know you want to know, so let’s start with our best guesses now.
Is there any chance we get a rematch? And if we do, can Loma turn it up earlier than he did this time? — Joe A.
What’s next for Lomachenko ? — Mario G.
Let’s try to deal with these together. First, I believe out of all the options available to the fighters now, a rematch does make the most sense.
As myself and colleague Mike Coppinger wrote about after the fight, the 11-rounds-to-one scorecard of Julie Lederman and the 9-3 (117-111) scoring of Steve Weisfeld were off from what most of us saw in watching the bout from both ringside and on television.
Lomachenko amazingly found himself shut out by the judges and outdone by Lopez’s activity in the first seven rounds.
“I never saw a (fight) strategy that was so bad,” Top Rank promoter Bob Arum told The Athletic on Sunday morning. “How do you give away so many rounds?”
But the proud champion’s rally was stirring and as he finally let his hands go, the action with Lopez was intense and of the highest quality. And because of commitments other fighters have elsewhere, going back to each other – especially after ESPN’s expected strong ratings – stands as an appetizing option that will either fully affirm Lopez’s greatness or present Lomachenko a path to a trilogy meeting with his young, bitter rival.
I asked Arum what he foresees next for Lomachenko and he said he’s not talking to either fighter for at least a week about their future plans.
“I have no idea and I’m not going to guess. I have learned in my 55 years of experience not to make plans right after the fight when you’re dealing with emotions,” Arum said.
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Arum agreed he has a wealth of choices for both men, including the idea of former three-division champion Lomachenko returning to the super-featherweight division, where champions Miguel Berchelt and Jamel Herring are under the Top Rank banner along with unbeaten former featherweight champion Shakur Stevenson.
What do you think affected Loma most Saturday night – his age (32), his long (14-month) layoff or Lopez’s power and excellent boxing? I think it’s some of each, but largely it was Lopez and his focus, movement, willingness to trade and (his) power. — David Kushin
The first thoughts that came to my mind were the layoff – remember, Luke Campbell told me in that story I wrote last week on former Lomachenko opponents that he “put a dent” in Lomachenko in their August 2019 bout – and Lomachenko’s disrespect toward Lopez’s boxing skill.
The Ukrainian’s accomplishments are intimidating, and then he usually triggers his boxing exhibition after a feel-out first round. This time, as he was dealing with the aggression and scoring blows from Lopez, Lomachenko literally couldn’t find himself. More than age, that was about the age difference as Lopez so impressively fulfilled his pre-fight talk, even the astounding claims that he could out-box the veteran champion.
Are there questions still to ask of Teofimo since Loma barely threw a punch for seven rounds, and when he started to throw in round eight, he won four of the next five (on one judge’s card, anyway)? I’m not 100 percent sold (on Lopez) just yet. — @ryanski72 on Twitter
If you’re not fully impressed by the kid puzzling “The Matrix” with his bold, powerful display Saturday, I’m not sure what more he can do to please you.
Let it soak in that no one has confounded Lomachenko as Lopez did. It’s likely because the astute veteran was working to solve how he could risk braving Lopez’s power by darting in and out of harm’s way as he so artfully does — usually. By the time he began succeeding, the outcome was sealed.
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The major question I now have about Lopez is what division he’ll go to next. While my hope is that he’ll rematch Lomachenko, don’t discount the idea that Lopez would remain at 135 pounds and take on the winner of the Dec. 5 Ryan Garcia-Luke Campbell fight, especially if that winner is the 22-year-old unbeaten Garcia.
While the Garcia-Campbell winner is supposed to be in line to fight the WBC “regular” champion Devin Haney next, Arum told me this Sunday:
“What happens if I approach the winner of that Garcia-Campbell fight and offer them a fight with Teofimo?” Arum asked in a tone that suggested that’s precisely what he’s plotting to do.
As WBC Franchise lightweight champion, Lopez is empowered to select whomever he wants without compromising his position in the sanctioning organization.
“It’s all well and good for Teofimo to say he wants to fight for the undisputed 140-pound title, but we haven’t even scheduled (Jose) Ramirez and (Josh) Taylor yet, or selected the venue, and the winner is obligated to fight Jack Catterall, anyway,” Arum said. “So, at best, the earliest he can get to that fight is next December.”
Hi Lance. Congrats on predicting Lopez from the start. You had it. I know Andre Ward will hear this and tell me to shut up, but I have to say it: This was not Lomachenko’s weight class. How would you feel about him getting the winner of Gervonta “Tank” Davis and Leo Santa Cruz at 130? — Dean M.
Thank you, Dean. I did take months of abuse for picking Deontay Wilder over Tyson Fury and have been somewhat validated by this upset that was banked upon Lopez’s supreme confidence.
As for the suggestion that lightweight is not Lomachenko’s ideal weight class, you are correct. Look at the results in the past five fights: a unanimous decision loss to Lopez, unanimous decisions over Luke Campbell and Jose Pedraza, getting knocked down by Jorge Linares before finishing him and dominating an aged-out Anthony Crolla.
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Going to 130 would not only give Lomachenko access to the Top Rank members in that stable but put him in the crosshairs of that Halloween night pay-per-view winner of Davis and Santa Cruz.
Lomachenko told me even before fighting Crolla that he wanted to fight Davis, and as Santa Cruz so eloquently said in last week’s “The Pug and Copp Boxing Show,” he is pushing to close out his career with a series of major fights, and these two have been within mention of each other for the past half decade.
The hitch is the Top Rank-Premier Boxing Champions divide, but after seeing Lopez expose Lomachenko’s vulnerable side, why wouldn’t they be interested in pressing for that fight?
Why do you think that it is becoming more and more regular that we are getting three judges’ scorecards so many miles apart? Is it human error or could there be something more sinister at play? Especially with one judge last night seemingly to be on his phone mid-round. — Michael M.
Look, I’ve been at fights – Manny Pacquiao-Tim Bradley I, Manny Pacquiao-Juan Manuel Marquez III, Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Canelo Alvarez and Canelo Alvarez-Gennadiy Golovkin I – where I’ve been so disturbed by a score or scores that it seemed there’s no explanation other than corruption to describe it.
Bob Bennett, the executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Conmission, did not express any dissatisfaction with Lederman or Weisfeld regarding their wide scoring.
“The right fighter won the fight and history will document that Teofimo Lopez unified the lightweight titles,” Bennett told me.
Proving a payoff is difficult, however, so that moves us to the other alternatives to address lapses of competence, which I addressed in a recent story on “bubble” scoring and biases against “B” fighters.
In that story, WBC official Duane Ford is quoted, and I see it as a positive that the candid and respected Ford was recently promoted into a supervisory position overseeing judges.
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One way to confront these situations is to pressure the horrid scorer, something the Nevada State Athletic Commission did after Adalaide Byrd turned in her abysmal card in the first Alvarez-Golovkin fight by demoting her to undercard bouts.
Another is to accelerate the move toward using five judges, de-emphasizing the toll of one bad card, and WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman told me last week, he expects that process to be in play for WBC title fights by next year.
A collection of “remote scoring” cards has “so convinced me … the more who score it, the less chance we have of the possibility of a controversial or bad decision,” Sulaiman said before Lopez-Lomachenko.
Employing the extra judges is “about finances and a resistance to tradition.”
When that “tradition” seems too often to include awful scoring in major fights, there’s no reason but to change it.
I was surprised to learn that there wasn’t a rematch clause in the Loma/Lopez contract. I’d kinda taken for granted in a lot of big fights that there was one. My question: under what circumstances is a rematch clause generally included in the contracts? Is it just something that a shrewd manager will push for? Always included under certain circumstances? I mean, Dillian Whyte v Alexander Povetkin and Anthony Joshua vs. Andy Ruiz Jr. I included rematch clauses, but not a Loma fight? — Dak W.
Our Sarah Shephard reported on rematch clauses recently, and, yes, it is dependent on promoters or managers pushing for one.
Arum said Lomachenko and his manager Egis Klimas didn’t ask for a rematch clause, so there wasn’t one, likely a reflection of the confidence or “arrogance” that both Lopez and Campbell have said defines the former champion.
It is a puzzling lapse by Klimas, knowing that the fight was highly anticipated and that a Lopez victory would have raised the purses to a new, exorbitant level, especially with fans likely to attend the second fight. Instead, Lomachenko is now surprisingly just another challenger left to beg for a consideration from the champion.
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Assuming Anthony Joshua beats Kubrat Pulev on Dec. 12, how do you see the Tyson Fury, Deontay Wilder, Anthony Joshua situation realistically playing out? Seems like legitimate broadcasting clash issues that are stopping the December 19th Fury/Wilder fight. — Matthew G.
Yes, Matthew, ESPN and FOX were too clogged with too many college football conference championship games and some NFL action to make room for Fury-Wilder III, allowing Fury to invoke a path that excludes Wilder from another title shot for the foreseeable future, like all of 2021.
With Fury taking a stay-busy homecoming fight in England instead on Dec. 5 and him expecting Joshua to trounce Pulev, the pursuit is for a doubleheader of Fury-Joshua fights next year while Wilder will be left to sharpen himself against some guys in the PBC stable, with former champion Andy Ruiz Jr. standing as the most credible of the group.
(Top photo: Mikey Williams/Top Rank)