By Bart Barry-
Saturday a Thames riverboat ride east of London, one of the world’s five best prizefighters, Ukrainian lightweight Vasiliy Lomachenko, outfought Yorkshire’s Luke Campbell to collect Lomachenko’s third of four sanctioning-body titles and defend his (much more meaningful) Ring championship by unanimous decision. It was another test passed by Lomachenko, another test administered by a proctor much stricter than those subs who passed him so flatteringly at the lower grades.
The inverse logic of things being what it is an exodus from the Lomachenko bandwagon is probably underway just when the bandstand ought be overflowing. As Lomachenko does things that fulfill what hyperbole greeted his debut six years back, the hyperbolists, many now out of business with HBO’s welldeserved demise, turn their miniscule attention spans to new kids who turn sensational feats against hopeless opposition.
With each Lomachenko title acquisition the hyperbolists see more wear, less sublimity, more exposure. These lads yearn for some highlight-ready stuff like GGG duly delivers whenever matched at middleweight with welters. Lomachenko tried that route for a spell – the Rigondeaux debacle – then took the very next offramp. If the hyperbolists forget it, the historians shan’t.
Rather than stay at his natural weight, blast journeyman for easy money while occasionally preying on a brandname from a couple divisions below, Lomachenko went above his proper weight and began to unify titles by beating men who acquired those titles someway or another.
Luke Campbell is by no means boxing’s most-feared man but he sure as hell wasn’t a cherrypick either.
While the hyperbolists hop off the Loma bandwagon, I find myself gradually lumbering on. I verily enjoyed watching Lomachenko make battle with a man who did not fear him or have reason to, a man against whom even the most balletic footwork wouldn’t forego Saturday’s attrition requirement. Just as happened in his other three lightweight matches Lomachenko had to strike Campbell multiples harder to get any English out of him. Campbell fighting at home before some of our beloved sport’s best (if often delusional) fans, too, added another inch and five or so pounds to the Brit’s dossier.
In the midrounds Campbell did something dastardly stupid if daring: Throw a halfnaked backhand uppercut whilst moving forward. That’s not Boxing-101 verboten, because you don’t get to learn how to throw uppercuts till Boxing 102. But no sooner do they put you on the gym’s uppercut sack than they tell you never to throw the punch moving forward.
History has its share of cautionary clips to explain why, but let Buster Douglas’ halfnaked backhand uppercut lead against Evander Holyfield suffice. Campbell’s wasn’t telegraphed as Douglas’, no, and for that reason Lomachenko’s counter left didn’t get leveraged fully as Holyfield’s rightcross in 1990, but it was telegraphed enough, and Lomachenko looked almost euphoric at Campbell’s plunging forward.
Lomachenko’s counter left chastened Campbell and then Lomachenko’s professionalism nearly ended Campbell’s night. Knowing his opponent was gone wobblewoozy Lomachenko went HAM to Campbell’s body and delivered the Brit to his corner scrunchfaced wincing. Had the exchange happened at even super featherweight Campbell’d’ve seen naught of the championship rounds.
And we’d be hearing Lomachenko is a force of nature never before seen with gloved fists. But because Lomachenko wants posterity to regard him differently from his generational peers the exchange happened 10 pounds above Lomachenko’s debut weight, and Campbell, a significantly larger man, had himself another half fight to strike and be struck by the smaller champion.
This is why we ask fighters who are not heavyweights to rise through weightclasses and why even history’s best heavyweights are underrepresented on all-time lists. The more the consequences of a Lomachenko misstep grow and the consequences of a Lomachenko punch diminish the less any of us cares to hear a 15th recital on Lomachenko’s time in the ballroom.
Lomachenko needs all his wiles, these days, to jab a fellow lightweight in the first four minutes they share, much less mesmerize Max and Jim. And since his opponents are no longer imperiled by his mere reputation, Lomachenko now finds himself subjected to what elbows and shoulders lighter men hadn’t the wherewithal to throw. Campbell spent a fair fraction of his Saturday night reminding Lomachenko how many questionable acts might be fit in the foggy chaos of a championship prizefight, borrowing occasionally from Siri Salido’s forgotten blueprint.
What Lomachenko did Saturday brought no one to mind so much as Manny Pacquiao. He’s the last man we saw climb weightclasses and so dominate their titlists, even if there was an occasional cherrypick thrown in. Pacquiao is also instructive for this reason: What Pacquiao did and found himself forced to do against other great prizefighters are why Pacquiao is thrice the legend for all but the last second of what he did in the sixth round of his fourth fight with Juan Manuel Marquez than he’d be for icing David Diaz a dozen times.
Lomachenko is not Pacquiao and won’t be – fortune hasn’t given him the era for it – but he is now admirably earning the premature plaudits bestowed on him some years back, even if he’s having to do so in challengers’ arenas on a mobile app.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
