By Jeff Aranow: Top Rank boss Bob Arum says super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko is so good that he’ll make a joke out of WBC lightweight champion Mikey Garcia and WBA champion Jorge Linares when he moves up to the 135-lb. division in 2018.
Arum says there’s no one good enough to give Lomachenko a fight in the lightweight division right. That’s why Arum is now kicking around the idea of Lomachenko possibly moving up to the 140-lb. division. Lomachenko would have to agree to Arum’s vision for him to fight at light welterweight, because it would be a risk to him, even though the 140-lb. division has been emptied out of talent with Danny Garcia, Lamont Peterson and Terence Crawford moving up to 147.
What we do know is Lomachenko is pretty good at beating guys 2 divisions below his weight in super bantamweight Guillermo Rigondeaux. Lomachenko used his 3-inch height and a big weight advantage to force Rigondeaux to quit at the end of the 6th round last Saturday night in their fight on ESPN at Madison Square Garden in New York. We learned from that fight that lomachenko is very good at beating guys a lot smaller than him. What we don’t know is if Lomachenko can beat good fighters above his weight.
“He’ll take anybody,” Arum said of Lomachenko via RingTV.com. “He’ll go to 135 pounds and he’ll make a joke of [Jorge] Linares. He’ll make a joke of [Mikey] Garcia. They’re really good fighters, but this guy is super special. You’ve never seen anything like this. Maybe he’ll go to 140, I don’t know. He’s going to do this to everybody.”
Eventually, Lomachenko is going to face someone that he can’t clown and force into quitting. He could have fought Terence Crawford, but he didn’t fancy that fight. Arum wasn’t volunteering Lomachenko to fight Crawford at 140. But now that Crawford is gone, Arum is saying Lomachenko can move up to the light welterweight division. The reality is that Lomachnko can move up to 135 and 140 and likely beat whoever Top Rank is able to setup fights with. But it might not do much for Lomachenko’s star power given that there aren’t any real stars at lightweight other than Mikey Garcia and Linares. It would be surprising if Arum is able to setup fights between Lomachenko and Garcia and Linares. I don’t think he’ll be able to do it.
There aren’t any top guys at 140 for Lomachenko to fight to get the boxing public interested. These are the best fighters at light welterweight right now:
• Rances Barthelemy
• Sergey Lipinets
• Amir Imam
• Regis Prograis
• Jose Carlos Ramirez
• Viktor Postol
• Josh Taylor
• Adrien Broner
• Antonio Orozco
• Maurice Hooker
Lomachenko might need to move up all the weight to 147 if he wants to get the biggest names that will have a chance of potentially beating him. That’s where the money’s at for Lomachenko if he’s willing to take a risk with his career by giving away size advantage. The question is will Lomachenko be willing to give away the same size advantage that Rigondeaux did fighting him last Saturday night?