Lomachenko takes a career risk against Russell Jr

By Boxing News - 06/18/2014 - Comments

LA-WKOT-Lomachenko(Picture credit: Hogan Photos) By Dan Ambrose: #4 WBO Vasyl Lomachenko (1-1) will be taking a big career risk this Saturday night against the more experienced #1 WBO Gary Russell Jr (24-0, 14 KO’s) in an ill-advised fight for the vacant WBO featherweight title at the StubHub Center, in Carson, California, USA. Lomachenko was already exposed in his last fight in getting out-worked and out-punching by the older Orlando Salido last March.

Instead of learning his lesson in that he didn’t have the experience to be fighting for world titles, Lomachenko has decided to fight for the same time for a second time. He was given a huge break by the World Boxing Organization with them ranking him high and ordering a fight between him and Russell Jr. What the WBO did was unheard, because you don’t see fighters with 1-1 records being given world title shots in the sport.

The WBO obviously justified their decision to let Lomachenko get another shot at the WBO title because of his two previous Olympic gold medals. There are other fighters with Olympic medals and they weren’t pushed up the rankings the way that Lomachenko was. The WBO didn’t do Lomachenko or boxing fans a favor by having him fight for a world title instead of someone who has plied his trade for a while such as Lee Selby or Marvin Sonsona.

If Lomachenko loses this fight to Russell Jr, he’ll have a record of 1-2, and it’s going to be a pretty big blow to his career. With Top Rank backing Lomachenko, he’ll be given another immediate world title shot in his next fight. But it’s going to look really bad at that point with Lomachenko being given title shots with such a poor record while other fighters with good records see themselves being passed over by Lomachenko.

“Gary Russell is much faster than me,” Lomachenko said. “He’s a very quick, speedy fighter, and I won’t know until we get into the ring how I plan to deal with it. But we’ll find out soon enough.”

Hopefully, Lomachenko doesn’t spend the entire fight clinching like he did in the Salido fight, because that was painfully boring to watch, and there’s no way that fight should have been scored as a split decision with all the holding Lomachenko was doing all night long. He clearly didn’t have the game to fight Salido in a toe-to-toe manner, so he ended up holding for 11 of the 12 rounds.

Speaking of Salido (41-12-2, 28 KO’s), he’ll be fighting on August 30th in Hermosillo, Mexico, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. There still isn’t an opponent picked out yet for Salido, but the fight will be taking place at super featherweight instead of in the featherweight division.



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