By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is ready to put two-time Olympic Gold medalist Vasyl Lomachenko (1-0, 1 KO’s) in with newly crowned two-time WBO featherweight champion Orlando Salido (40-12-2, 28 KO’s) on January 25th at Madison Square Garden in New York. Lomachenko, 25, won his pro debut last Saturday night in stopping Jose Ramirez (25-4, 15 KO’s) in the 4th round at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Salido fought on the same card and defeated Orlando Cruz by a 7th round TKO win to capture the vacant WBO featherweight title that had previously belonged to Mikey Garcia.
This move could end up backfiring on Arum with Lomachenko getting knocked out or outpointed by Salido. From what I saw of both fighters, Lomachenko doesn’t have the fighting style to beat Salido. Lomacheko isn’t incredibly fast like Mikey Garcia was when he beat Salido last January, and he’s not a busy fighter, as we saw with his win over Ramirez.
Lomachenko mainly sits back and throws an occasional big shot to the midsection. His power isn’t better than Salido’s, and his lack of a work rate is going to cause him to get punished against him. Salido will stay on top of him and outwork him and maybe even get a stoppage. This is the wrong fight for Lomachenko.
Arum would be better off steering Lomachenko towards IBF featherweight champion Evgeny Gradovich or WBA champ Chris John. I think Lomachenko would match-up better with either of those guys than he would with Salido.
Lomachenko may have been a good amateur fighter, but he faced a lot of average fighters in building up his resume, and it was short 4-round fights with head-gear on. He wasn’t facing a guy like Salido with good power, a busy work rate in a 12 round fight. I think we’re going to see Lomachenko get exposed badly by Salido next January.
In looking at the Lomachenko-Ramirez fight, if Lomachenko hadn’t scored those two knockdowns in the fight, he would have been in a lot of trouble because Ramirez was badly outworking him and landing a massive amount of punches. If you put Lomachenko in with a much bigger puncher like Salido with an equally high work rate, it’s going to be bad for Lomachenko unless he score a knockout, which I don’t think he can. Salido has a really tough chin and I don’t think he’s going to be bothered by Lomachenko’s body shots.
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