By Chris Williams: By Chris Williams: Guillermo Rigondeaux is sounding very confident ahead of his fight against WBO super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in New York. Rigondeaux (17-0, 11 KOs) says he’s going to be whipping Lomachenko’s backside this Saturday night in their fight on ESPN.
Rigondeaux is 110% confident he’s going to hand Lomachenko (9-1, 7 KOs) his second career defeat when they meet inside the ring on December 9.
Rigondeaux is ready to shut up the critics, and prove the odds-makers wrong. Lomachenko, 29, is the favorite to win the fight, but the bettors have been wrong before, and Rigondeaux plans on making them eat a big plate of humble pie by taking the 2-time Olympic gold medalist Lomachenko to school and giving him a boxing lesson inside the ring in front of his loyal boxing fans. Lomachenko is expected to have the crowd on his side in this fight, as it’s taking place in New York where he has a large Ukrainian and Russian fan base that will be turning out to see him.
“I don’t even look at that [expletive],” said Rigondeaux to secondsout.com when asked what he has to do to beat Lomachenko. “I adapt. We’re going to resolve this issue and we’re going to beat the [expletive] out of him. I know what I’m bringing. I don’t know what what the hell he’s bringing. I’m bringing mine. 110 percent, we’re going to win,” said Rigondeaux.
The angles and footwork that Rigondeaux has been showing during his workouts this week has been incredible. Lomachenko doesn’t possess the footwork or the hand speed and boxing skills that Rigondeaux has going for him. The only thing Lomachenko has is the size advantage. Lomachenko, 29, also has the age advantage over the 37-year-old Rigondeaux, but age doesn’t matter when you have someone with the kind of boxing skills that the Cuban 2-time Olympic gold medalist possesses.
Rigondeaux has been called a boring fighter by a lot of boxing fans. He plans on making them eat their words by knocking out Lomachenko. The Ukrainian has never been knocked out before. Lomachenko was beaten up by Orlando Salido in a 12 round decision loss in 2014, but he made it out of that fight on his feet. Salido made Lomachenko look REALLY bad in that fight. It was a total schooling by Salido, who created the blueprint in how to beat Lomachenko by targeting his body. Lomachenko wasted a lot of energy in that fight by using his herky-jerky head movement to avoid punches, but those punches never came. Salido ignored Lomachenko’s head and aimed his punches at his midsection. The shots were hitting Lomachenko all night long to his body. By the 5th, Lomachenko could no longer handle the body shots, and he spent the remainder of the fight holding Salido to keep him from throwing to the body. The judges had no choice but to give Salido the win, even though he was the B-side going into the fight. It was a fight that Lomachenko was supposed to win, but he couldn’t because he was too busy holding Salido. Lomachenko still has that amateur fighting style. He’s not used to getting hit to the body, and he probably never will. He’s just a short version of Sergey Kovalev in that respect. Kovalev can’t handle body shots either, as we saw in his 2 losses to Andre Ward.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ISxvopKhqE
