By Chris Williams: Top Rank boss Bob Arum reportedly isn’t sure whether the long-anticipated fight between lightweight champions Vasiliy Lomachenko and Teofimo Lopez will take place on May 30, given the COVID 19 pandemic.
The good news is the Lomachenko vs. Lopez fight will eventually happen, according to Arum. It just might not be on May 30, depending on the status of the coronavirus crisis.
Boxing fans don’t want to wait until 2021 to see Lomachenko and Lopez (15-0, 12 KOs) fight it out. Arum says that Australia has testing kits. Perhaps he can order some, and use those to test Lomachenko and Lopez so that fight can happen.
Arum recently had to cancel two of his fight cards for March 14 and March 19 because there was no way of testing the fighters for the coronavirus. The postponement of these two cards effected two of Top Rank’s popular fighters Shakur Stevenson and Michael Conlan.
Arum angry at lack of testing kits for coronavirus
“We have an obligation to these fighters that work hard to get ready for a fight, and the last thing we want to do is to pull the plug,” said Arum to @SiriusXMBoxing on the recent cancellations of his March 14 and March 17th cards at Madison Square Garden in New York.
“So we figured we’d comply with the New York State Rule of no more than 250 people in a room, and do the fights without an audience. No media or nothing and just the television. It looked like we could get that done. I mean, it was a big sacrifice for us to lose the gate, but at least the fights went on. We were consulting the whole time with the New York State Athletic Commission, and then they correctly brought in their medical advisers.
They said, ‘we would advise you not to go ahead because who is going to test the fighters?’ If a fighter had the virus, he could easily transmit it to his opponent who might not have it because they’re in very close contact.
Australia has testing kits
“Yeah, because this son of a gun, who was elected president of the United States, is bull-s— everybody about tests being available when what he should have done is as soon as the virus became apparent in China and it looked like it was going to travel,” said Arum. “He should have gotten hundreds of millions of kits in the United States just the way they did in Australia.
“In Australia, any person can go into a pharmacy and get tested and get a result back in a day or two. This country, supposedly the most wealthy country in the world, and we had a dunce as president and an administration that doesn’t function and has never done anything for testing and can’t get tested,” said Arum.
WBO featherweight champion Shakur Stevenson (13-0, 7 KOs) is furious that his fight against Miguel Marriaga was wiped out for this Saturday. Stevenson went through a hard training camp to get ready for the Marriaga fight only to see the fight postponed.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t care if it was just me and Marriaga in the building I’m still gone do what I do, I worked my ass off for 8 weeks ain’t nothing gone stop my night from being special🗣 #NewarkMade,” said @ShakurStevenson.