By Tim Royner: Guillermo Rigondeaux did NOT suffer a broken left hand in his loss to super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko as originally thought last Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. According to Rigondeaux’s promoter Dino Duva, he suffered a bruised left hand in the fight.
Rigondeaux surprised many boxing fans when he retired on his stool after round 6 had ended. Rigondeaux (17-1, 11 KOs) stated that he injured his left hand, and he couldn’t continue to the condition it was in. Many boxing fans feel that the 37-year-old Rigondeaux only quit due to the way he was being humiliated inside the ring by Lomachenko, who was giving the unbeaten 2-time Olympic gold medalist a boxing lesson.
“No break, but severe contusion [bruise] on left hand,” Dino Duva said about Rigondeaux’s left hand injury to ESPN.com.
This obviously isn’t good news for Rigondeaux, who now looks like he quit due to a minor injury rather than a broken hand, which was originally feared. It doesn’t really matter though. The boxing public largely believes Rigondeaux quit because he was over-matched by Lomachenko. Even if Rigondeaux did suffer a broken hand, it wouldn’t change the minds of many fans and media, which saw him quitting get out of a humiliating situation inside the ring. Lomachenko was not only beating Rigondeaux, he was clowning him by playing around, and making him look bad inside the ring. No one had ever done that to Rigondeaux before. It was obviously a bitter pill for Rigondeaux to swallow, so he opted to quit on his stool rather than continuing after the 6th round had ended.
Lomachenko isn’t without his own criticism for his decision to fight an opponent 2 divisions below him in Rigondeaux, who was forced to come up in weight from the super bantamweight division all the way to super featherweight to take the fight. Lomachenko didn’t want to meet Rigondeaux halfway between the 2 weight classes at 126, which would have made the fight fairer. Moreover, Lomachenko was fine with Rigondeaux coming up 2 weight classes to fight him at super featherweight, and yet he himself wouldn’t move up 2 weight divisions to fight former light welterweight champion Terence Crawford at 140. Lomachenko wouldn’t take the same risk by moving up in weight to fight Crawford. Rigondeaux took the risk and failed. Lomachenko didn’t take the risk in moving up, so he escaped a potential failure of his own against Crawford. It’s likely Lomachenko would have been beaten just as badly by Crawford as Rigondeaux if not worse. Lomachenko doesn’t have to take the same risks that Rigondeaux does because he’s being given the red carpet treatment by his promoters. You won’t see Lomachenko moving up 2 divisions to put himself at a disadvantage against Crawford, Errol Spence, Keith Thurman or Shawn Porter.
Rigondeaux is expected to be stripped of his WBA super bantamweight title now that he’s lost to Lomachenko. The World Boxing Association plans on taking Rigondeaux’s title away from him, even though he didn’t have the title on the line for the Lomachenko fight. It’s expected that the WBA will install Moises Flores as their new WBA super bantamweight champion after Rigondeaux is stripped of his title. Rigondeaux knocked out Flores in the 1st round in his last fight. The results of the fight were overturned and changed to a no contest due to one of the punches hitting Flores after the bell. It’ll be interesting to see if the WBA drops Rigondeaux from their top 15, which would make it extremely difficult for him to get a title shot anytime soon.