By Sean Jones: Bob Arum says that lightweight champion George Kambosos Jr. and his promoter Lou DiBella will need to move on if Vasyl Lomachenko’s situation in Ukraine doesn’t resolve by the end of this week.
Unfortunately, it’s not looking good for Lomachenko (16-2, 11 KOs) to return from Ukraine soon, considering he’s defending his country from the Russian invasion, which hasn’t shown any indication of ending anytime soon.
Kambosos and his promoter DiBella will need to decide what a good secondary option would be. Many boxing fans believe that IBF/WBA/WBC Franchise/WBO lightweight champion Kambosos (20-0, 10 KOs) should fight WBC champion Devin Haney.
It would be wise for Kambosos, 28, to wait for the outcome of next month’s fight between Ryan Garcia and Emmanuel Tagoe on April 9th. If Ryan (21-0, 18 KOs) wins that fight, Kambosos can defend against him on June 4th in Melbourne, Australia, in a large stadium fight.
With Ryan’s colossal number of social media followers on Instagram and Twitter, he would be able to attract massive interest in a fight with Kambosos. Ryan has an incredible 8.7 million followers on Instagram and 1.16 million on his YouTube channel. That’s a lot of potential fans that Ryan Garcia can advertise his fight with Kambosos to.
The main negative about Kambosos fighting the young 23-year-old Haney is that it’s a match-up that probably won’t attract much attention because Devin is young and not well known yet in the eyes of casual boxing fans.
“If this doesn’t get resolved by the end of the week, Lou has to look out for his fighter. He’s been a gentleman and all of this and there’s always tomorrow,” said Bob Arum to Fight Hub TV about Kambosos needing to move on if Lomachenko doesn’t signal that he’ll be returning from Ukraine to take the fight on June 4th.
“Kambosos can get another opponent, and hopefully wins and can then fight Loma later in the year, assuming the conflict has been resolved,” said Arum in giving an optimistic best-case scenario outlook.
Haney (27-0, 15 KOs) also lacks charisma and has a boring safety-first style of fighting, which involves a lot of jabbing, moving & clinching. In other words, Haney is what is referred to as a ‘spoiler’ type of fighter.
Although some casuals compare Haney’s fighting style as being similar to Floyd Mayweather, that’s inaccurate. Haney is more like the 42-year-old version of Mayweather in terms of hand speed and fighting style.
Devin fights nothing like the young version of Mayweather when he was in his 20s, knocking his opponents out at super-featherweight.
When Mayweather got older, he moved up to welterweight and became the boring fighter that most boxing fans remember him. That’s the hit & move style that Mayweather employed to beat welterweights like Marco Maidana, Robert Guerrero, and Victor Ortiz.
Arum said that he had the Kambosos – Lomachenko fight locked up for June 4th in Australia, but then things were foiled with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The former three-division world champion Lomachenko is from Ukraine, and he chose to stay and defend his country. At this point, Arum has no idea when Lomachenko will resume his career.
If Kambosos will make a defense of his titles and then wait on Lomachenko or Ryan Garcia, it could be risky because one of the sanctioning will likely order him to defend against one of his mandatory challengers.
It’s better for Kambosos to face Ryan next if they can make a deal with his promoters at Golden Boy. It will be up to Oscar De La Hoya if he’s ready to throw Ryan to the wolves or if he wants to let him make money fighting obscure guys like he’s been doing.
