By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is reportedly working on putting together a fight between his two stable fighters WBO featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko (5-1, 3 KOs) and super featherweight contender Nicholas Walters (26-0-1, 21 KOs) for April 30, according to Fight News.
The fight might not be taking place on HBO. As reported earlier this week, the 84-year-old Arum is shopping the Lomachenko-Walters fight on Showtime. It seems HBO isn’t all that excited about the fight.
Lomachenko and Walters are very good fighters, but neither of them have been able to create a huge fan base as of yet. Lomachenko was already beaten by Orlando Salido in 2014, but he never avenged that loss. That defeat was a bad one because Lomachenko spent much of the fight clinching Salido to keep him from throwing body shots. It was a really poor performance from Lomachenko.
Walters, 30, has his own problems. He was held to a 10 round draw in his last fight in December against Jason Sosa in a fight in which he looked really poor. Sosa hit Walters with every punch he threw practically, and it was only later in the fight that Walters was able to come on to salvage a draw. It was not a great performance from him that makes you want to see him fight again.
Before that fight, Walters lost his WBA featherweight title last year in June when he failed to make weight for his fight against Miguel Marriaga. Walters ended up winning the fight by a 12 round decision, but it was bad that he couldn’t make weight. Walters looked really heavy in that fight like a light welterweight in size.
Some boxing fans feel that the main reason Walters has done so well at featherweight was because he was dehydrating down to make the weight class, and then rehydrating up to have a weight advantage over his lighter opponents. Walters sure did look big in his fights against Nonito Donaire and Vic Darchinyan.
“We’ve always been open to all promoters,” said Showtime vice president of sports Stephen Espinosa.
If HBO isn’t interested in televising the Walters vs. Lomachenko fight, then you can understand their predicament. They need fighters that bring in good ratings. I don’t know that a fight between Walters and Lomachenko is going to do that. These guys haven’t been knocking out everyone they’ve faced lately like Gennady Golovkin, and they’ve both had some problems in the past that showed that they had flaws in their games. Lomachenko still have Orlando Salido problems. Walters still has Sosa problems. I’m just saying. Neither of these guys are making you forget Floyd Mayweather Jr.
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