By Chris Williams: Nicholas Walters (26-1-1, 21 KOs) is taking quite a bit of criticism since quitting after round 7 last Saturday night against WBO super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko, but according to his promoter Bob Arum, he told him he was hurt in the 7th. Walters took a left hand from Lomachenko to the head that had him hurt. Walters felt that he was going to be knocked out if he had continued fighting. That might sit right with some boxing fans, but you cannot blame Walters for continuing if he felt he no longer has any chance of winning.
Arum said this to ESPN.com about Walters telling him that he was hurt by Lomachenko in round seven:
“He told me he was going to get knocked out. He said he got really hurt,” Arum said.
There was a flurry of punches that both fighters threw in round seven. It just so happened that Walters was the one who ended up getting hurt by the shots. It could have easily have been Lomachenko if one of Walters’ big shots had landed cleanly. Walters did land during the two wild flurries that Lomachenko threw in the 7th, but his punches didn’t hit in the right spot to hurt the two-time Olympic gold medalist.
The boxing fans got a good fight last Saturday night between Lomachenko and Walters at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, Nevada. The arena was packed with fans. The Lomachenko-Walters fight was televised by HBO World Championship Boxing. Walters did himself proud by fighting until he no longer could fight. He didn’t quit. He bowed out gracefully in a fight that he was no longer capable of competing in. It’s like with any sport. With an athlete gets injured, they’re pulled out of the contest. Walters was hurt, so he was smart enough to tell his trainer and referee Tony Weeks that he couldn’t continue. There’s no shame or embarrassment in that. Walters told referee Tony Week, “No,” when asked if he wanted to continue fighting after the 7th.
The fight came down to tactics. Walters had the wrong battle tactics against Lomachenko for him to do the job. Walters was shooting off howitzer like power shots with both hands in throwing one big punch at a time. What Lomachenko was doing was focusing on throwing machinegun like punches at rapid speed and volume. You can win using Walters’ style of fighting if you consistently throw your shots and/or you have Julian Jackson type punching power.
Walters wasn’t throwing his shots in a consistent enough way, and he obviously didn’t possess the Jackson-like one-punch power for him to get away with throwing so few punches in each round. Walters averaged a little over 30 punches thrown per round. You’re not going to win too many fights if you don’t attack your opponent, especially if you’re fighting a sharpshooter like Lomachenko.
“Nicholas could not get his punches in on Lomachenko. He was unable to do it,” Job Walters said via ESPN.com.
The loss for Walters, 30, wasn’t the end for him. He’s going to learn from this defeat and move forward to accomplish big things in the sport. Walters will definitely improve from the loss to Lomachenko, because the lesson is there for him. Without defeat, a fighter like Walters, or anyone for that matter, can’t improve. Walters just had the wrong game plan for the Lomachenko fight. In hindsight, Walters’ trainer should have switched to Plan-B after the first two rounds of the match. It was readily apparent by the 3rd round that Walters could not win with the style of fighting he was using. Walters was trying to land single shots to the he and body of Lomachenko, and it wasn’t working. Walters was missing or getting countered from Lomachenko.
What Walters should have done was start attacking Lomachenko with nonstop punches. If Walters could have gone from throwing 30 punches per round to throwing over 100, he would have given Lomachenko no breathing room to focus on his technique. The way to beat a high tech boxer is to make it an old school brawl to where they can’t think at all. You force them to go primitive where they have to throw nonstop punches without thinking about punch placement, and without being able to use movement. The fighter that wins in all-out wars is the guy that is tougher, stronger and more capable of throwing a lot of shots. That’s what Walters should have done when his Plan-A failed to work. He should have made it a war.
I wouldn’t have recommended that Walters take it to the inside to try and fight Lomachenko on the inside like we saw Andre Ward skillfully do against IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev last week, because Walters doesn’t have a good enough inside game to fight like that. If Walters had that type of game in his skillset, then it would have been a good option for him. Walters appeared to only have one fighting plan for the Lomachenko fight, and that was to stay on the outside and throw one big punch after another.
That style worked beautifully for Walters in his fights against Nonito Donaire, Jason Sosa and Vic Darchinyan, but it didn’t work against Lomachenko. It was a failure. Walters didn’t adjust in the fight last night against Lomachenko, and that was his downfall. In contrast, Lomachenko made at least two adjustments in the fight in speeding up his attacks starting in the 4th round, and then increasing his punch volume in the 7th. In each case, Walters wasn’t ready for the adjustments that Lomachenko made. Walters failed to adapt to what Lomachenko did, and he slowly fell apart. You can argue that Walters completely fell apart in the 7th. It looked that way to me. Walters needed a time out and some quick advice from his corner, but you don’t get timeouts in boxing. Walters didn’t have an answer for what Lomachenko was doing inside the ring.
“One year without fighting,” said Walters. “You guys (HBO) only gave me one fight. He’s more active than me. In the last round, he started catching me more and more. He caught me with some good shots in the last round. I was just holding on to survive.”
Walters says he was just trying to survive in the 7th against Lomachenko. That’s the whole problem. Walters wasn’t in the condition to win the fight after getting hurt by Lomachenko, so he did the noble thing in retiring on his stool. Believe me; there’s nothing wrong with a fighter quitting on his stool if he’s hurt, and about to be knocked out. The stupid thing would have been for Walters to go out and try and fight Lomachenko under those kinds of condition. Walters could have been badly hurt if he had gone out for the 8th and continued to get pummeled by the Ukrainian.
If the shoe was on the other foot and Lomachenko was hurt, I tend to doubt that he’d have been eager to go out and take the huge sledgehammer like blows from Walters in the 8th. If Lomachenko had come out badly hurt for round eight, he wouldn’t have lasted long against Walters. That’s the thing with boxing. Anyway can get hurt no matter how talented they are. Once they get hurt, it’s pretty much over with.