By Jeff Aranow: WBA lightweight champion Vasiliy Lomachenko (12-1, 9 KOs) seemingly coasted for the first 10 rounds before turning it on in the 11th round to score two knockdowns, and go on to beat World Boxing Organization lightweight champion Jose ‘Sniper’ Pedraza (25-2, 12 KOs) by a 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night in their unification fight on ESPN at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Lomachenko, 30, won by the scores 119-107, 117-109, and 117-109. Boxing News 24 scored it for Lomachenko by a 117-109 score. Lomachenko won the fight, but it wasn’t nearly an impressive performance, and it was far from an exciting fight to watch. It was dull in comparison to some of Lomachenko’s previous fights.
In the 10th round, Pedraza appeared to hurt Lomachenko with a hard body shot that clearly bothered him. In the 11th, Lomachenko came out fast and dropped Pedraza twice. Pedraza should have held Lomachenko after the first knockdown in order to avoid taking punishment, but he didn’t think of doing that. The second knockdown of the round appeared to be a low blow from Lomachenko. Fortunately the fight wasn’t halted after the low blow. It was a miracle that Pedraza made it out of the round, considering that he was hammered the entire time with unanswered shots. The referee showed a lot of patience in choosing not to halt the fight. He could have done so and no one would have complained.
This was a purely tactical fight between two boxers. Lomachenko can turn it on with his offense from time to time, but tonight he fell into a pattern when he was frequently trying to show that he was the more technical fighter than Pedraza. In the end, Lomachenko showed that he has more technical ability than Pedraza, but not by much. The fact both guys spent most of the fight boxing each other instead of slugging, it made the fight boring for a lot of boxing fans. On social media, fans were complaining at how dull the Lomachenko vs. Pedraza fight was. The fans should have known going into the bout that the fight was going to be a boxing match.
Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis did a far better job of defeating Pedraza by a 7th round knockout in January 2017 than Lomachenko did tonight. Of course, Davis, 24, is younger, stronger and faster fighter than Lomachenko. He’s also healthier in terms of being injury free. Lomachenko was coming off of shoulder surgery on his right shoulder following his last fight against Jorge Linares last May.
All in all, it wasn’t a great performance from Lomachenko, but he was coming off of shoulder surgery. You can’t blame Lomachenko for not fighting at a high level after shoulder surgery. He likely fought in 1st gear in order not to reinjure his shoulder. However, if Lomachenko is going to fight like this the remainder of his career, he’s going to have problems.
