By Chris Williams: WBA Word lightweight champion Jorge Linares (44-3, 27 KOs) will be defending his title this Saturday night against Vasyl Lomachenko (10-1, 8 KOs) on ESPN at Madison Square Garden in New York.
This is the 30-year-old Lomachenko’s long overdue move to the 135 lb. weight class.
The Linares vs. Lomachenko fight comes down to these areas:
• Speed – Linares has the edge here. Lomachenko is not that fast. He does have good speed, but he’s a speed burner like Linares. Lomachenko is more along the same lines as Luke Campbell in the speed department
• Power – Linares
• Boxing skills – Even
• Experience – Linares. You can’t count amateur experience as experience in the pro ranks, because it’s an entirely different sport. Amateur boxing is like fencing. With the way that fights are scored in the amateur ranks, fighters have to hit with the tip of their gloves, and the judges don’t score body shots. So you get a lot of fighters that come out of the amateur system and all they know how to do is stay on the outside and throw spearing jabs and power shots
• Ring IQ – Even. Linares and Lomachenko are both smart fighters inside the ring
• Ring generalship – Lomachenko has the edge here. Linares can sometimes go to sleep inside the ring and give away rounds
• Youth – Lomachenko, 30, is two years younger like Linares. I don’t know if this is going to be much of a factor in the fight though, because Linares looks pretty fresh for his age
• Size – Linares. He’s 5’8” compared to the 5’7” Lomachenko, and he has a three inch reach advantage. The size of Linares could be a problem for Lomachenko if he chooses to stay on the outside and jab all night long
Even thought Linares has the advantage in many of these areas, it’s going to be difficult for him to win this fight unless he can do it with his speed advantage and his ability to throw combinations. Lomachenko has been faster than most of his opponents, and has now has a habit of throwing speedy, taping punches that leads to stoppages. Lomachenko’s opponents quit on him because they get embarrassed and they don’t want to be clowned for an entire fight.
There’s not been a lot of news on the Linares-Lomachenko fight lately, as both guys great talkers, and they tend to take the modest approach to hyping themselves. Nonetheless, the hardcore boxing fans are very interested in seeing the Linares vs. Lomachenko fight, because the winner of this match will be meeting WBC lightweight champion Mikey Garcia. At 140, Mikey’s power isn’t great, but at 135, he’s shown himself to have one-punch power, and he could have too much for Lomachenko. As good as Lomchenko is as a fighter, he’s not unhittable. With Mikey’s power, he can end a fight with one punch at lightweight. As we found out in Mikey’s last two fights at 140, his power didn’t carry up to the light welterweight division. Lomachenko is not a big lightweight, so he could be susceptible to the power of Mikey.
Lomachenko has been lucky that he hasn’t had to deal with issues where he’s frozen out from being able to fight particular guys due to them being with a rival promoter. There’s less of that kind of thing stopping good fighters at featherweight, super featherweight and lightweight. The politics starts to show themselves at 140 and 147. If Lomachenko ever fights in either of those weight classes, then it’s possible that he could have problems getting fights against certain fighters. Right now though, it doesn’t look like Lomachenko will bother moving up to 140, because there aren’t a lot of interesting fights in that weight class. That could change if Bob Arum is able to turn WBC light welterweight champion Jose Ramirez into a star. Lomachenko vs. Ramirez would be a good fight for the future if both guys can win over a lot of fans before then.
This is going to be tough for Lomachenko, because this fight will be fought in his third weight division since he turned pro five years ago in 2013. Lomachenko has moved up 10 lbs. since starting his pro career at 126, which isn’t easy to do in the lighter weight classes and still find success. Lomachenko has won world titles at featherweight and super featherweight. Now he’s going to try to win one more belt at lightweight if possible.
Lomachenko comes into the fight with Linares with a 9-fight winning streak that he’s compiled since his lone loss of his career against Orlando Salido in March 2014. Lomachenko was beaten by a 12 round split decision in that fight. Salido was too good for Lomachenko in targeting his midsection for the entire fight. That’s an area that Linares might want to focus on when he faces him on Saturday, because Lomachenko moves his head a lot to avoid getting hit upstairs, but he’s vulnerable to the body. Salido showed that quite clearly.
Lomachenko spent most of the fight holding Salido to keep him from hitting him to the midsection. At the time of Lomachenko’s loss, Top Rank blamed it on Salido coming in 2 pounds over the weigh-in limit for their fight at featherweight. But obviously that wasn’t the reason why Lomachenko lost the fight. He wasn’t mentally ready in his second fight in the pro ranks to take on a fighter as advanced as Salido, who fought completely different than the guys that Lomachenko had been fighting during his long amateur career in Ukraine.
Lomachenko had won 2 gold medals in the Olympics and finished his amateur career with an insanely great record of 396-1. In the pro ranks, the fencing style of fighting that Lomachenko had learned as an amateur was useless to him, because it was an entirely different sport that he had to learn. Lomachenko made adjustments after losing to Salido by making sure he moved around the ring, and stayed on the outside much of the time rather than being a stationary target and letting his opponents nail him to the body the way Salido had.
Lomachenko probably should have made the move to lightweight two years ago in 2016 instead of staying at super featherweight all that time to fight Roman Martinez, Nicholas Walters, Jason Sosa, Miguel Marriaga and Guillermo Rigondeaux. It’s better late than never. Lomachenko is now in the position to fight Mikey Garcia if he can get past Linares on Saturday. Lomachenko’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank will probably look to match him up against WBO lightweight champion Ray Beltran before long, as the promoter likes to do a lot of in house fights involving his fighters.
Surprisingly, there’s not a lot of buzz about the Linares vs. Lomachenko fight on social media and the boxing forums this week. For a fight that was supposed to be a huge one, there’s not much discussion.
“I’ve done this a long time and he hasn’t had those tomato cans that you usually feed to the guys as you’re building them,” Arum said to Yahoo Sports News. “He didn’t get those four- and six-rounders who really don’t have a shot to win the fight. He was fighting real guys from the beginning.”
If Lomachenko didn’t insist on fighting quality fighters from the get go when he first turned pro, I suspect that Arum would have been matching him against tomato cans to this day. Look at how Arum is matching IBF super flyweight champion Jerwin Ancajas and WBO super middleweight champion Gilberto Ramirez.
Lomachenko is the reason why he’s been fighting good opposition from the jump. If not for Lomachenko insisting that he fight good fighters, we’d probably be seeing him fight the usual fodder in showcase fights to make him look sensational. The problem is that Lomachenko wouldn’t get a lot of attention fighting the weak opponents. No one pays attention when fighters face horrible opponents repeatedly. The boxing fans want to see fighters take on the best every time out.