by Bart Barry-
Saturday Ukrainian super featherweight titlist Vasyl “Hi-Tech” Lomachenko defeated Colombian featherweight Miguel Marriaga after seven rounds when Marriaga’s corner decided not to continue. Though Lomachenko felled Marriaga in round 7 it was Lomachenko’s face, not Marriaga’s, bleeding when the fight got stopped by a trainer that was merciful – the sort of mercy we’re told often is a proper substitute for suspensefulness.
By a show of hands, how many aficionados want another Soviet Bloc nonheavyweight Olympic medalist to dash through showcase matches with undersized men while his handlers claim nobody will fight him?
Nope, didn’t think so.
Me either.
What made Lomachenko so initially refreshing dissipates with each showcase match and subsequently so does the refreshment of watching his technical acumen. Back when Lomachenko was an undercard fighter for “Son of the Legend” Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. he performed in San Antonio and did not impress. Lomachenko got roughed and decisioned by Orlando Salido a year after Salido got dropped a fourtime by Mikey Garcia.
I recall two sensations ringside that night: Sympathy and relief. Lomachenko clearly prepared for a contest betwixt sportsmen more than a fight and hadn’t technology high enough to discourage Salido’s hitting him wherever Salido pleased after the Mexican missed weight whimsical audaciously the day before. That brought sympathy. The sense of relief came with a rude pop just after the decision got read and Lomachenko’s hyperbole balloon burst.
Though evidently it’s forgotten now, back then there was a burgeoning controversy about Lomachenko’s actual record, too. Editorial instructions from The Ring led my report to read:
“Lomachenko (7-1, 1 KO), whose official record on Fight Fax showed as 7-0 before Saturday, counting the six World Series of Boxing matches for which Lomachenko received payment . . .”
That clause happened prefight when all assumed Lomachenko’s tilt with Salido be a limp formality, not a lesson that was stiff, and journalism wanted to preempt loose promoter taglining on record this and historic that. Lomachenko got manhandled forthwith, and I recall thinking: Good, he’ll have to go deep and redemptive before we hear exclamation marks about him again.
So naive. Not only do veteran commentators now parrot Lomachenko’s promoter, but Lomachenko believes so deeply his run is historic he cannot believe a 130-pound athlete who speaks Golovkin English is not a sensation in the United States already and the rest of the world. Well. If he thinks boxing owes him a celebrity run at super featherweight like Manny Pacquiao’s he needs be told boxing thinks he owes us a Marquez, a Barrera and a pair of Morales.
Lomachenko gave us Gary Russell in 2014 and Nicholas Walters in 2016, both are good and neither belongs in the preceding sentence, but Lomachenko’s 2017 is not thusfar near so dazzling. Instead, with Marriaga, Lomachenko’s handlers began down the tired path Lomachenko’s fellow Olympian blazed for them: No 130-pound man in the world dares face Lomachenko, so we had to get a 126-pound man to do it!
This ain’t gonna work for a few reasons, the first being th’t that trail is already blazed, razed and worn baldly. The second concerns the 70 pounds of opponents between Lomachenko and heavyweight among which must be found a handful that do not cower at the syllables Hi Tech. The third if not final reason is Lomachenko’s promoter and its new network. Top Rank is better than Lomachenko-Marriaga; it’s the sort of jam-it-past-the-keeper garbage-goal the outfit scored often and lucratively on HBO.
It feels like ESPN knows this. Compared with Horn-Pacquiao what happened Saturday and the way it was broadcasted was inferior. Along with leaving Friday Night Fights’ crew in place like wait-and-see ESPN overwrote the twofight undercard with a reheated NFL marathon of football players making speeches – something unimprovable by metaphor.
You give us a Donaire-Narvaez main, we put your undercard on a smartphone app.
Nevertheless aficionados now are expected to play the opponents-in-common game with Lomachenko in lieu of seeing him compete, like: “Yes, Nicholas Walters and Oscar Valdez each beat Marriaga in the last two years, but they didn’t stop him, and speaking of Walters, Lomachenko beat him the way Sugar Ray Leonard beat Roberto Duran.”
This game is one more lamentable part of the fallout from the illadvised buildup to Mayweather-Pacquiao, when the hypothetical wholly supplanted the actual, and therefore one more lamentable effect Money May took on boxing. If we play this game we put ourselves in a bidding battle with our own imaginations till we see in an undertested titlist Harry Greb’s footwork and Sonny Liston’s jab. Or we can choose not to play. We can say: You look supercute in a kiwi bodystocking, yes, and you have more angles than a cubed octagon, but your career mark is 2-1 in fights anyone thought you could lose and that is the squareroot of historic.
Whatever Teddy and Max opine of Lomachenko the lad is yet to do fractionally enough in his career to make appealing the way he taunted Marriaga, who looked more than a weightclass smaller. Your promoter puts you on national TV with a little guy coming off a loss, you snatch his consciousness in three – you don’t squaredance your way to cuts and a midrounds corner stoppage.
There’s nothing invincible about Lomachenko – Salido proved that – and he can make fantastic and compelling fights against larger men. Even a 135-pound version of someone like Marriaga might’ve been interesting. But a few more showings like Saturday’s and there’s a good chance ratings are going to remand Hi-Tech himself to the high technology of ESPN’s smartphone app.
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Author’s note: This column will not appear next week, as its author will be in Peru en route to being conquered by Montaña at Machu Picchu.
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Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
