By Brian Webber: Bob Arum says Vasyl Lomachenko’s return fight this Saturday night against Jamaine Ortiz could answer the question about whether he’s ready to challenge Devin Haney for his undisputed lightweight championship.
Lomachenko (16-2, 11 KOs) has been out of the ring for almost a year, and he hasn’t faced a high-caliber opponent at 135 since his loss to former unified lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez in 2020.
Not surprisingly, Arum isn’t sure whether Lomachenko will be ready to take on Haney. If not, then it’s fair to say the two will NEVER fight because Devin is moving up soon, perhaps in his next fight.
While Arum would love to make the Haney vs. Lomachenko fight while Devin is still signed with Top Rank, that it’s highly questionable whether that’ll happen.
Listening to Haney’s dad, Bill Haney, in an interview today, he repeatedly brought up how Devin looked at the weigh-in for his last fight against George Kambosos Jr two weeks ago, and he seemed to be planting the seeds for an excuse for why he won’t be fighting Lomachenko.
If Haney vacates his four belts at 135 to move up to 140, Bill will probably tell the media that he could no longer safely make weight, so he had to do this.
“We have to see where Loma is after his fight on Saturday. Is he ready for Devin Haney?” said Bob Arum to Cornerman Boxing.
“They all can’t fight at the same time, but they all can fight in the same year against each other,” said Arum about his hopes of having his fighters Lomachenko, Haney, and Shakur Stevenson fight each other
“It would be great if two of them fought in the first fight and the third one fought the winner. That would be a perfect way to set everything up. We’ll see. These are all people that are my friends, and I’ll be talking to all of them.
“We’ve loaded it up with so many great prospects, and this is, in effect, an Olympic card because Loma has two Olympic gold medals, which is very rare, and Robeisy Ramirez has two Olympic gold medals. He’s the last guy to have beaten Shakur Stevenson.
“So all these other fighters, Olympians, also have silver medals and different metals, and they’re all top prospects. Anybody that cares about boxing and has bought a ticket to this show should come for the first fight so that they could see all these talented young men, who I think will be break-out stars,” said Arum.
