By Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Jr. wasn’t all that impressed with what he saw from Vasyl Lomachenko’s recent 6th round stoppage win over Guillermo Rigondeaux from December 9. Mayweather says he saw immediately that Lomachenko was much bigger than Rigondeaux when the two of them stepped foot inside the ring.
Mayweather didn’t come right out and say that he would have beaten Lomachenko had the two fighters faced each other at super featherweight, but you can read between the lines that he probably feels this way. Mayweather was a much better fighter offensively and defensively than Lomachenko when he was fighting at 130 in my view.
Mayweather notes that there weren’t any big punches landed in the fight, and he saw neither guy getting marked up or hurt from the shots. Lomachenko was throwing weak, fluttery shots like he normally does in his fights, and Rigondeaux was just holding the entire fight.
”I never fought a guy that was that small,” said Mayweather to Fighthype.com about Lomachenko. ”He was smaller than that. Honestly, they didn’t look like they belonged in the ring together,” said Mayweather about Lomachenko and Rigondeaux. ”I don’t think Rigondeaux had a hand problem. Rigondeaux should just take that as a learning experience,” said Mayweather.
Mayweather is correct. Rigondeaux moved up 2 weight classes to fight Lomachenko, and he didn’t bulk up in coming up in weight. Rigondeaux was still a super bantamweight, but he was facing a guy that looked like he was in the mid-140s for the fight. Lomachenko looked like he had a 15 pound weight advantage. That’s a lot of weight to have over your opponent when you’re fighting in the lower weight classes.
”A guy that big, I could see the difference when they got into the ring,” said Mayweather in talking about Lomachenko being much bigger than Rigondeaux. ”A small good fighter will never beat a big good fighter. It’ll never happen.”
Mayweather is right abou Lomachenko being much bigger than Rigondeaux. Lomachenko looked huge when he and Rigondeaux got inside the ring for the fight. Rigondeaux was at a tremendous disadvantage for the fight. He shouldn’t have agreed to take the fight if Lomachenko wasn’t going to meet him halfway between 122 and 130, especially given that his purse split for the fight was 25/75. Rigondeaux had to move up 2 weight classes and agree to a 3-1 deal with the purse for him to get the fight with Lomachenko.
”it really was no damage done to neither side,” said Mayweather ”Real stiff, robotic fight,” said Mayweather continuing to talk about the Lomachenko vs. Rigondeaux fight. Nobody really landed like no killer, solid shots. You can look at me and Diego Corrales. I can’t take that away from Lomachenko. He done what he had to do,” said Mayweather.
Lomachenko was very stiff and robotic in the Rigondeaux fight. Lomachenko lacked the fluidity that we saw from greats like Mayweather. I could only imagine what Mayweather would have done to a fighter like Lomachenko if they fought each other at super featherweight or lightweight. Mayweather’s speed, boxing skills, power and size would have likely been too much for Lomachenko to handle.
