By Chris Williams: WBO super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko could be facing Manny Pacquiao in 2017 if he gets past former WBA 126lb champion Nicholas Walters this Saturday night in their fight on HBO World Championship Boxing from the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum reminded fans on Monday that he’s interested in putting the two-time Olympic gold medalist Lomachenko (6-1, 4 KOs) in with Pacquiao possibly next year if he keeps winning. Unfortunately for Arum, Lomachenko, 28, might lost his fight this Saturday night against Walters, because this is a guy with crashing power, a long reach, and top rate boxing skills.
More than that, Walters does well against fighters that come straight at him, which is a habit that Lomachenko has. Walters, 30, could time Lomachenko and knock him into next week with one of his big power shots.
I still don’t understand why Arum hasn’t been mentioning Walters as a possibility for Pacquiao to fight if he gets past Lomachenko. It seems to me that when you have two of your fighters from your Top Rank stable facing each other, as Arum has this Saturday with the Lomachenko vs. Walters fight on HBO, you at least give them BOTH a glimmer of hope for a Pacquiao fight by saying the winner of the fight COULD face Pacquiao in 2017. Instead, Arum is only mentioning Lomachenko’s name. What kind of message does that send out to Walters? Is he just the B-side opponent for Lomachenko?
What happens if Walters destroys Lomachenko? Does he not get the Pacquiao fight? If not, why wouldn’t he? It would seem like a good thing to do if you’ve got a guy that destroys a two-time Olympic gold medalist. Lomachenko is reportedly only willing to go as high as the lightweight division (135lbs) to fight Pacquiao. I don’t want to speak for Walters, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he agreed to move up all the way to 140 to fight Pacquiao.
It would be a great payday for Walters if he got the Pacquiao fight. I could see Walters meeting Pacquiao at 140 and not complaining about it as well. He strikes me as the type who would gladly face Pacquiao and look to KO him the same way Juan Manuel Marquez did in 2012.
“He’s going to win other world titles as he goes up in weight,” Arum said on Monday. “And there’s going to be very, very interesting guys for him to fight. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that he and Manny could fight sometime next year. Vasyl Lomachenko wants challenges and he’s a tremendous talent, so his upside his enormous,” said Arum.
Here’s the deal. Let’s pretend that Lomachenko does beat Walters on Saturday night, and that he looks good in doing so rather than horrible like he did in losing to Orlando Salido in 2014. If Arum goes ahead and matches Pacquiao against WBC/WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford next, which is a fight Pacquiao could lose, just how much interest would there be in a Lomachenko fight in 2017 after all that? A loss for Pacquiao to Crawford would likely kill any interest from the boxing fans in a Pacquiao-Lomachenko fight, wouldn’t it? If Arum went and pushed the levers to make Pacquiao vs. Lomachenko immediately after Pacquiao is totally clowned and maybe even knocked out by Crawford, who is going to want to see a fight between him and the Ukrainian fighter?
I can’t think of many boxing fans that would want to see Pacquiao fight under those conditions. The fans would want Pacquiao to fight Crawford again so that he could clear up his loss to him. The only way that Pacquiao fights Lomachenko is if he beats Crawford first, and then the fight can happen later on in 2017. I think it’s pretty clear that Arum is going to take Pacquiao up on his offer to fight Crawford.
Pacquiao made that offer after his recent win over Arum fighter Jessie Vargas in their fight earlier this month on November 5. Pacquiao said he would be open to fighting Crawford, and that he would leave it up to Arum to select his next opponent. I wouldn’t be surprised if those were the magical words that Arum has been waiting for from Pacquiao, because it means that we’re very likely going to see him fighting Crawford next. Pacquiao will lose to Crawford, because he’s a counter puncher who likes to move around the ring.
Pacquiao can’t cut off the ring, and he’ll end up chasing him all night long in boring fight. Yeah, Arum can stick Lomachenko in with Pacquiao after he loses to Crawford, but who will want to watch Pacquiao after that? I wouldn’t be surprised if Pacquiao-Lomachenko does only 200,000 buys. Pacquiao vs. Tim Bradley 3 did 400,000 buys. Pacquiao vs. Jessie Vargas did around 300,000 buys. Pacquiao vs. Terence Crawford might do a little less than 400,000. With another defeat for Pacquiao, I see his PPV buys nose diving just like they did after his loss to Marquez in 2012, and after his loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2015.
The smart thing for Arum to do is to match Pacquiao against Lomachenko in early 2017, and save the Crawford fight until the very last fight of his career. If Pacquiao is willing to tell Arum when he’s going to be fighting for the final time, then Arum can stick Crawford in with him and hope that it will help increase his value to his Top Rank stable for having fought Pacquiao. I don’t think it will, but I’ve seen history after watching Tim Bradley fight Pacquiao three times and fail to become a PPV attraction. I’ve seen Chris Algieri and Brandon Rios fight Pacquiao and fail to become PPV attractions.
“From the first day I met him,” Arum said about Lomachenko. “He sat down with me and we discussed his future. He told me he didn’t want a signing bonus. He wants to earn his own money. All he wanted is challenges that I would present to him and that’s what I’m going to do. He doesn’t want – like a lot of fighters – gimmes. He wants every fight to be a challenge, and I’m not going to slow him down.”
We haven’t seen Lomachenko in with Orlando Salido since he was beaten by him. We didn’t see Lomachenko fight Francisco Vargas, Carl Frampton, Leo Santa Cruz, Oscar Valdez, Jose Pedraza or Jezreel Corrales. Instead, we’ve seen Lomachenko fight Roman “Rocky” Martinez after he was softened up by Salido in back to back fights. We’ve seen Lomachenko fight these guys: Jose Ramirez, Romulo Koasicha, Gamalier Rodriguez, and Suriya Tatakhun. The only good guys that Lomachenko has faced were Orlando Salido and Gary Russell Jr. in my view. Lomachenko’s record against those guys is 1-1. I don’t count Roman Martinez as being a real threat to Lomachenko, because he had been through two grueling fights against Salido before he fought him. Yeah, Lomachenko has fought some good guys, but not the really good guys. Why didn’t Arum put Lomachenko in with Francisco Vargas, Frampton, Santa Cruz, Valdez, Pedraza or Corrales? That’s the big question.
Nicholas Walters hasn’t fought since last year when he was held to a 12 round draw by Jason Sosa. I wonder how the ring rust is going to affect Walters for the Lomachenko fight.