Joseph Diaz Jr. wants Teofimo Lopez to KO “arrogant” Vasiliy Lomachenko

By Boxing News - 05/09/2020 - Comments

By Jeff Aronow: Joseph’ Jo Jo’ Diaz Jr. wants IBF lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez (15-0, 12 KOs) to knockout WBA/WBC/WBO 135-pound champ Vasiliy Lomachenko (14-1, 10 KOs) when the two of them fight in a unification match.

Lomachenko and Teofimimo were supposed to fight in May, but the pandemic caused the fight to be postponed until a later date.

Diaz Jr. says he sees the two-time Olympic gold medalist Lomachenko, 32, as an arrogant person, and for that reason, he wants Teofimo to win. Jo Jo thinks the 22-year-old Lopez has the youth, size, speed, and punching power to beat Lomachenko.

In Lomachenko’s fights against Jorge Linares and Jose Pedraza, he was hit many times and came out of the contests looking like he’d had a tough time.

Teofimo has the power to hurt Lomachenko

It’s not going to be easy for Teofimo to land one of his big shots on Lomachenko because he’s tough to hit. Teofimo will have a puncher’s chance of beating Lomachenko like most of the Ukrainian fighter’s opponents.  However, Teofimo can hurt Lomachenko if he catches him cleanly like he did IBF lightweight champion Richard Commey.

If Teofimo hits Lomachenko with the same type of shot that he hurt Commey with, he’ll stun him enough to finish the job with a follow-up barrage. Lomachenko is an outstanding fighter, but his chin isn’t as good as some of the younger fighters like Gervonta Davis. Lomachenko didn’t start at lightweight when he turned pro in 2013.

When he turned professional, Lomachenko fought at 126, and he was able to handle the shots from the guys in that division without too many issues. But now that Lomachenko is fighting at 135, it’s a different story. He’s not taking the shots as well as he did when he was fighting at featherweight, and that could be bad news for him when he faces Teofimo.

Diaz Jr. counting on Teofimo beating Lomachenko

“I hope Teofimo knocks him too. I don’t like Lomachaneko that much,” said Diaz to Fighthub. “And I just think he’s too cocky and too arrogant. I’m really hoping for Teofimo Lopez. I hope he knocks him out, and he has a good chance of knocking him out,” said Diaz.

It’s going to be difficult for Lopez to beat Lomachenko because he’s never fought anyone with his technical style of fighting. Lopez looked frustrated last year in his fight against Masayoshi Nakatani. He won the fight, but it was closer than the scored handed down by the three judges.

They scored it wide in Teofimo’s favor in giving him the win by this set of scores: 118-110, 119-109, and 118-110. Some boxing fans had the fight scored a draw, whereas others saw it as a narrow win for Teofimo. What’s important, though, is how many problems that Nakatani gave Teofimo in that fight.

That fight showed that Teofimo struggles against smart fighters, who know how to negative his power. You got to believe that Lomachenko will study the Lopez-Nakatani battle, and he’ll use the things he learned to

Teofimo can hurt Lomachenko

“If he’s able to catch him with some decent shots, then he could actually hurt Lomachenko because he is the bigger guy, and he has more size and he’s strong, and he’s fast,” said Diaz. “Lomachenko, we’ve seen him get hurt before by Jorge Linares. We’ve seen him catch some decent shots, so it’s not like he’s unbeatable,” said Diaz.

Lomachenko does get hit a lot nowadays, but he does an excellent job of avoiding his opponent’s big punches. You can argue that Lomachenko hasn’t faced a big puncher since his fight with Nicholas Walters in 2016.

Loma completely befuddled the heavy-handed Walters, frustrating him to the point where he quit after the seventh round. That fight was a long time ago, though, and Lomachenko was younger back then. We haven’t seen Lomachenko fight like that in many years, and he’s

If you watch the Lomachenko-Linares fight, it was a flash knockdown that Linares scored in the sixth round. Lomachenko walked into a shot, and he hit the deck. No way was Lomachenko hurt by the knockdown. The proof of that is Lomachenko dominated the remainder of the round after he got back to his feet.

Teofimo only has the chance of beating Lomachenko, and that’s by knocking him out. If Teofimo fails to land that big shot, he’s going to go home a loser on the night.

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