By Sean Jones: Vasily Lomachenko is still thinking about his last fight against Teofimo Lopez as he prepares for his fight next month against Masayoshi Nakatani (19-1, 10 KOs) on June 26th at the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas.
The two-time Olympic gold medalist Lomachenko wants a chance to get even with Teofimo to avenge his loss. That’s going to be hard for Lomachenko to do, given that Teofimo is expected to move up to 140 soon.
If Teofimo’s promoters at Top Rank were willing to let him fight the undisputed light welterweight champion Josh Taylor, he’d likely make the move up to 140 as soon as he beats his IBF mandatory George Kambosos Jr on June 19th.
But it looks like Top Rank boss isn’t going to let Teofimo get a shot at Taylor right away. Teofimo will need to wait before he gets a crack at Taylor’s four titles, and that might not take place until 2022,
Lomachenko (14-2, 10 KOs) lost the fight to Teofimo by a wide 12 round unanimous decision seven months ago on October 17th on ESPN pay-per-view. Some people believe that Lomachenko is having a hard time making sense of what happened to him in that fight.
However, if you score the fight round by round, you can find six rounds that Lomachenko appeared to win, as he clearly won one of the first six, and then five of the last six rounds after Teofimo gassed out.
After watching a replay of the fight many times, Lomachenko concluded that it should have been scored a 12 round draw.
The boxing public saw it as ‘W’ for Teofimo, but where they disagreed was with the scoring.
While the fans saw the fight as a close match decided by a couple of points, the judges scored it for Teofimo by these strange sets of wide scores: 116-11, 119-109, 117-111.
The judges took away from Teofimo’s victory with the way they scored it so wide.
“My opinion now after watching (Teofimo Lopez clash) a lot of times, my opinion it was a draw,” said Lomachenko said last Saturday night to ESPN.
“It’s the best choice for me. I want to compare myself with this guy (Teofimo). He was close with (Lopez) in their fight. He’s a great opponent for me.”
It’s obviously tough for Lomachenko to deal with the defeat that he suffered against Teofimo, but those things happened. Lomachenko should feel proud because he was for intents and purposes fighting a 140-pounders in Teofimo.
That guy is clearly a light welterweight in size, and he’s a lot younger, bigger, and stronger than Lomachenko. Considering that Lomachenko should be fighting at 130 rather than 13o, he did surprisingly well against Teofimo.
When you add into the equation the right shoulder injury that Lomachenko fought with, it makes sense that he struggled against the bigger fighter Teofimo.
If Teofimo was fighting in the 140-lb division, where he should be at, he would struggle if all of a sudden he moved up two weight divisions to take on top junior middleweight like Jermell Charlo.
That’s what Lomachenko is doing by fighting outside of his natural weight class at super featherweight. Lomachenko is a little too small for the 135-lb division, and he clearly lacks the size to be fighting 140-pounders like Teofimo.
Lomachenko is picking a tough one for his first fight back from shoulder surgery and a loss to Teofimo. Nakatani gave Teofimo all he could handle in losing a 12 round decision in 2019. In his first fight back after that loss, Nakatani stopped Felix Verdejo in the 9th round last December.
As for Lomachenko getting a rematch with Teofimo, it’s not likely to happen in this lifetime. Teofimo is happy to have escaped with a win over the injured Lomachenko, and he clearly doesn’t want to chance it by fighting him now that he’s healthy and firing on all eight cylinders.