Lomachenko vs. Crolla & Ramirez vs. Karpency – weigh-in RESULTS

By Boxing News - 04/11/2019 - Comments

Image: Lomachenko vs. Crolla & Ramirez vs. Karpency - weigh-in RESULTS

By Aragon Garcia : WBA/WBO lightweight champion Vasily Lomachenko and his opponent Anthony Crolla weighed successfully on Thursday for their main event fight on ESPN+ this Friday night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez and Tommy Karpency also made weight for their light heavyweight contest in the co-feature bout.

(Photo Credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank)

Lomachenko (12-1, 9 KOs) weighed in at 134.4 pounds, while his opponent former WBA champion Crolla (34-6-3, 13 KOs) weighed in at slightly heavier at 134.8 lbs. Both fighters looked in great shape, as one would expect from these two professionals. Crolla, 32, is trying to recapture his old World Boxing Association lightweight title he lost three years ago to Jorge Linares by a 12 round unanimous decision in September 2016. This will be Lomachenko’s second defense of his WBA title he won last May in defeating former Crolla conqueror Jorge Linares by a 10th round knockout. Lomachenko made his first defense of the WBA title last December in beating Jose Pedraza by a 12 round unanimous decision.

With the huge amount of attention being put on Lomachenko’s fight against Crolla on Friday, he’s got to make sure he shines. Lomachenko had a lot of people watching his last two fights against Pedraza and Linares, and he turned in a couple of underwhelming performances. Yeah, Lomachenko won both fights, but this wasn’t the old Loma that boxing fans had remembered seeing him when he was fighting at super featherweight. Lomachenko blames his lack of domination at lightweight on him now fighting guys that are bigger than himself, but that’s not really the case.

“His style is very defensive for American fans,” Lomachenko said to Fighthub about Crolla. “He’s every time in defense, waiting for your mistake. So I have my strategy. For me, it’ll be hard. I’ll have to find a key for his defense. Correct [worried about fight being boring for the boxing fans], because I always think about me fans, and I always think about an interesting show in the ring. That’s why I think about this. That’s why I think about his defense. I’ll need a longer time to find a key,” Lomachenko said.

Pedraza and Linares are both fighters that fought at super featherweight, and and are the same size as Lomachenko. He didn’t look good against those guys because they were talented fighters that had a technical boxing skills. Lomachenko is a good fighter, but when he gets to the level he’s at now in having to tangle with guys like Linares and Pedraza, he’s finding out that he’s not that much more skilled than they are. Lomachenko isn’t admitting, but that’s the reality.

Lomachenko’s promoter Bob Arum said that if Loma wins this fight against Crolla, he’s going to look to match him against WBC lightweight champion Mikey Garcia, Luke Campbell or IBF champion Richard Commey. The idea is Lomachenko wins one of the lightweight titles in his next fight to add to his collection of belts. Once Lomachenko has all four titles, Arum wants to put him in with Top Rank fighter Teofimo Lopez after the Super Bowl in early 2020.

“Now I’m very close to my dream. I have left two more belts,” Lomachenko said about him wanting to win the IBF and WBC lightweight belts in the possession of Richard Commey and Mikey Garcia. “My next fight is maybe Richard Commey. What about Mikey? It depends on him. Can he come back to 135, but now he’s till 135 lb world champion. It depends on him. If he leaves his belt, somebody will capture the belt. We can organization with future champion. Different size, different weight class,” Lomachenko said about Mikey Garcia. “For him, it’s hard for him to cut to 135 now, I believe.”

Unbeaten WBO super middleweight champion Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez (39-0, 25 KOs) weighted in at 174 1/2 pounds for his 10 round fight against former light heavyweight world title challenger Tommy Karpency (29-6-1, 18 KOs). For his part, the 33-year-old Pennsylvania native Karpency weighed in at 174.5 lbs.

This is a test case bout for Ramirez, 27, for him to see how he feels, and to find out if this is a good fit for him to fight at light heavyweight. Ramirez is fighting an excellent southpaw in Karpency, who has in with the likes of Adonis Stevenson, Nathan Cleverly, Andrzej Fonfara, Chad Dawson, Karo Murat and Oleksandr Gvozdyk. Karpency is a tough cookie. His left hand punching power is excellent, and if Ramirez isn’t able to cope with what he brings, then that’s a pretty good sign that he won’t be able to handle the harder hitters in the 175 lb weight class like Artur Beterbiev, Sergey Kovalev, Marcus Browne, Eleider Alvarez, Anthony Yarde, Oleksandr Gvozdyk, Sullivan Barrera and Callum Johnson. Ramirez was smart not to vacate his WBO 168 lb title before taking this fight with Karpency. If Ramirez doesn’t look good at light heavyweight this Friday, he can always move back down to super middleweight to resume defending his WBO title.

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