Vasily Lomachenko & George Kambosos Jr. have a fight in the works for the IBF lightweight title on April 13th or 14h in Australia. The fight between the two 135-pounders is close to being finalized.
It’s unclear if this will be an ESPN PPV in the States. Hopefully, that would DOA with American fans. They’re not going to want to pay to watch Lomachenko bat Kambosos around the ring in April and make him look worse than Devin Haney & Maxi Hughes did.
This will be a business-level fight and an excellent opportunity for the popular two-time Olympic gold medalist Lomachenko to get a nice payday for what should be an easy win against the hapless one-hit wonder, former IBF, WBA, WBO & Ring Magzine lightweight champion Kambosos.
This will give Kambosos a chance to recapture his IBF title, which he lost to Haney by a lopsided twelve round unanimous decision last year in June at the 53,000-seat Docklands Stadium in Melbourne, Australia.
A massive horde of Aussies showed up to see Kambosos fight, and they had to have been disappointed with what they saw.
Interestingly, the Haney-Kambosos rematch was moved to the much smaller 15,000-seat Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne. This suggests the fans weren’t as eager to see Kambosos after his previous loss to Haney.
Does Kambosos deserve to fight for IBF world title?
It’s unclear why the International Boxing Federation has the 30-year-old Kambosos ranked so high, given that his record is 1-2 in his last three fights and probably should be 0-3 if you saw his recent match against Maxi Hughes.
These contenders in the IBF rankings would be far better option than #2 Kambosos to be fighting for the 135-lb belt against Lomachenko:
Raymond Muratalla
William Zepeda
Edwin De Los Santos
Frank Martin
Floyd Schofield
Maxi Hughes
Isaac Cruz
Jamaine Ortiz
Keyshawn Davis
Kambosos doesn’t fit in among those talents, and he doesn’t belong inside the ring with the gifted legend Lomachenko, aside from sparring purposes. He’d make an excellent sparring partner for Lomachenko but a horrible opponent for a real fight.
Lomachenko, turning 36 in February, will have an excellent chance of picking up an easy belt without taking on WBC champion Shakur Stevenson or WBA ‘regular’ champ Gervonta Davis. Those would be tough fights for Loma.
It would be better for Lomachenko to fight newly crowned WBC lightweight champion Shakur for his title, as that’s a fight that would interest U.S boxing fans, and it would be interesting to see how Loma dealt with the timid runner, who was recently booed nonstop for his boring performance against Edwin De Los Santos on November 16th in Las Vegas.
Lomachenko coming off a loss
This is an odd match-up, as the Top Rank-promoted Kambosos has arguably lost his last three fights since last year, as he’s coming off a highly controversial twelve round majority decision victory over Maxi Hughes and, before that, back-to-back defeats against Devin Haney.
Many boxing fans viewed the Kambosos Jr-Hughes fight as a clear win for Hughes, who dominated Kambosos the entire fight, hitting him at will with shots and making him look worse than his two previous defeats against Devin Haney,
Ringmagazine is reporting the news of the Lomachenko-Kambosos fight, which will see the former unified three-belt champion Kambosos (21-2, 10 KOs) getting home advantage once again.
The former three-division world champion Lomachenko (17-3, 11 KOs) is coming off a bitter defeat at the hands of former undisputed lightweight champ Devin Haney last May.
If Kambosos loses this fight, this has to be it for him on the world stage because he would need to rebuild himself in a massive way to be given another opportunity to fight for a beautiful belt.
Top Rank could throw Kambosos in with Muratalla in a sink-or-swim manner, and if he gets whipped, cut him adrift and wash their hands of him. That’s what Sean Jones would do.