By Chris Williams: In the latest news, Vasiliy Lomachenko vs. Teofimo Lopez has been pushed back from September 19 to October 3 for Las Vegas, Nevada. Top Rank president Todd Duboef informed Steve Kim about the new date for the fight, which is expected to take place without boxing fans in attendance.
If this date sticks, then people will only need to wait three more months for the Lopez vs. Lomachenko fight. That’s not a lifetime, but it still seems like forever given the number of postponements for the bout.
Expect more postponements
Don’t be surprised if the Lomachenko vs. Lopez fight continues to get pushed back repeatedly. The latest rescheduling of the contest was the third, and it’s gone beyond the point of it being ridiculous. It would be better for Top Rank to wait until they’re sure about a date before they reschedule the fight again.
It’s too bad Lomachenko, and Teofimo didn’t choose to take a tune-up fight because they’re both going to be rusty by the time they meet up. Lomachenko hasn’t fought since beating Luke Campbell on August 31 in London, England.
By the time Vasily faces Lopez on October 3, he’ll have been out of the ring for 14 months. That’s a LONG time for any fighter, especially for a guy 32-years-old and starting to show signs of age like Lomachenko.
In Teofimo’s case, he’ll have been out of the ring for ten months by the time of his fight with Lomachenko. It’ll be interesting to see which of the two fighters are impacted more from the long rest.
Staging Lomachenko-Lopez in 2021 would be better
With the money WBA/WBC/WBO lightweight champion Lomachenko (14-1, 10 KOs) and IBF champ Teofimo (15-0, 12 KOs) are losing out on in fighting without a gate, Top Rank should do them a favor and reschedule their fight in 2021 for after a vaccine is produced.
Those fighters are going to lose out on a lot of money by fighting without a gate, and Bob Arum likely won’t be able to assemble the type of undercard that he usually would have with boxing fans present.
Teofimo, 22, has been training nonstop for months since stopping IBF 135-pound champion Richard Commey in the second round on December 14 at Madison Square Garden in New York. The worry for Teofimo is that he could overtrain with all the postponements going on for his match with Loma.
What Teofimo has that working in his favor is his youth. He’s young enough to get away with training year-round for a fight, and he won’t be as affected as an older fighter would. In 32-year-old Lomachenko’s case, he’s only now said to be starting his training camp.
Chris Williams expects Arum and Top Rank to keep postponing the Lomachenko-Lopez fight into 2021, and it’s going to take forever for this match to get made finally. In the meantime, it might be a good idea for Arum to have Lomachenko and Teofimo in separate bouts in their Summer series fights on ESPN.
Lopez wants to move up to 140 already
Teofimo wants to get the fight with Lomachenko out of the way already so that he can move up. He wants to go after the belts in that weight class. Light welterweight champions Josh Taylor and Jose Ramirez are planning on meeting in a unification match this year. Both guys will move up to 147 after that fight, which will leave four titles for Teofimo to go after.
The constant postponements of the Lomachenko fight are delaying Teofimo’s move to the light welterweight division. Unlike Lomachenko, Teofimo has big things ahead of him in moving up. At 140, Lopez can grab a world title, and then lure some of the PBC welterweights to face him like Shawn Porter, Mikey Garcia, Danny Garcia, and Errol Spence.
In Lomachenko’s case, he’s going to be moving back down to 130, and likely going after the Top Rank champion Jamel Herring. The end game for Lomachenko is to face Shakur Stevenson if he beats WBC super featherweight champ Miguel Berchelt. Lomachenko vs. Stevenson would be a big fight and a potential passing of the baton from the old lion Vasily to the younger lion Shakur. That would be a win-win for Top Rank for Stevenson to take Stevenson’s scalp this early in his career.