By Bart Barry-
Saturday on ESPN in The Bubble Ukrainian lightweight world champion Vasyl “Hi-Tech” Lomachenko makes a title-unification match with Teofimo “El Brooklyn” Lopez from, well, you guessed it, a match anticipated to be the finest our sport produces during the pandemic no matter how long COVID-19 lasts. That this match will happen on basic cable is a wonderful thing.
Lopez is not ready for Lomachenko. That is the betting consensus, and as usual, it is a good one.
COVID realities being what they are this match likely happens two years too soon for Lopez and at a fine time for Lomachenko. How propitious the timing be for aficionados remains to be seen, but ask yourself how propitious anything has been for you this year. No, not very.
Lopez and his father talked their ways into this fight, a mainevent spectacular, with one of the world’s two best prizefighters, in Lopez’s very first mainevent. Until his ringwalk Saturday, that is, Lopez won’t have been a mainevent fighter. That’s surely part of what Lomachenko finds irksome. Lomachenko has asked whom Lopez beat to deserve even consideration for this fight, and that’s a fair question, even if its questioner remembers quite selectively his own qualifications for fighting Orlando Salido in Lomachenko’s second prizefight, which Hi-Tech lost.
In a deeper division and a different time this fight wouldn’t be ready. Lopez is currently the best challenger in the division. If Lomachenko’s stature transcends lightweights, though, his belts do not, and if Lopez is the best the division has to offer the time is right for Lomachenko-Lopez. Of course, the time has been right for Crawford-Spence for three years, and that hasn’t made anyone jump, so what is right has nothing on what’s promotionally convenient.
Saturday’s fight is nothing if not convenient for promoter Top Rank. Were Lomachenko a few years older this match mightn’t happen because you’d not want to lose a young marquee talent to a veteran with few fights left. Lomachenko is only 32 years-old, though, which means if he undresses Lopez and remands him to Brooklyn, tail buried deep in his hindquarters, Top Rank burnishes Lomachenko’s resume for another four-year run, while rehabilitating Lopez with the usual recipe: orphan him, send him to Hollywood, Wild Card him.
Fact is, Top Rank does not like or trust paternal trainers and tolerates them only until a highprofile loss then jettisons them when it can. With both guys trained by their dads Saturday’s loser, especially if it’s Lopez, can look forward to a greater dose than usual of family drama Sunday morning.
Comparisons of this fight to Mayweather-Alvarez aren’t inapt. The betting odds are about the same, but that probably underestimates Lopez’s chances a bit. Bookmakers caren’t who wins or even who’s favored; they want a balanced ledger, and there’s no way Honduras is betting on Lopez the way Mexico bet on Canelo.
What Lopez must do early to justify those odds is hurt Lomachenko. It can be done; Lomachenko’s been dropped by Jorge Linares and roughed-up by Siri Salido. Lomachenko is an extraordinarily arrogant prizefighter, and if he feels this entire spectacle is below him, and rest assured he does, he may be willing to forego a bit of his ballroom dancing and seek the initiative earlier in the match than is otherwise prudent.
Lopez is a better counterpuncher than most 23-year-olds with 12 knockouts in 15 fights. He is not prepared for Lomachenko, no one can prepare him for a guy who did his 10,000 hours to mastery then got bored and began inventing a new kind of boxing, but if Lopez commits to hitting Lomachenko everywhere, he might change the fight’s dynamic early. Or he might get denuded. That’s the gamble.
What’s not a gamble is what’ll happen if Lopez decides he can outbox Lomachenko and begins to wait. Whatever magic Lopez thinks his trainer and father has, there’s exactly zero chance an Olympic also-ran from Team Honduras is going to show Lomachenko – a twotime Olympic gold medalist – skills he didn’t see during his collective 21 rounds across from Gary Russell and Guillermo Rigondeaux.
Lopez’s best chance lies in exploiting Lomachenko’s arrogance, gainsaying it till rage overwhelms the Ukrainian’s ample professionalism. Lopez’s dad talks openly about being in Lomachenko’s head. Whether that’s true it does in fact represent Lopez’s best chance of catching early Lomachenko with something decisive.
But here we return to Floyd Mayweather, whom Canelo never caught with more than a breeze, and what happened when a boxer who took conditioning very seriously got clipped in round 2 by Shane Mosley. Sugar Shane, you’ll recall, buckled Money May good and proper in the opening five minutes of their 2010 match. How did Mayweather respond? Hands-up, feet spread, 1-2, 1-2. A couple minutes of that and Mosley was left behind to imagine what might’ve been. Mayweather, ever wary of his brittle hands, didn’t try to snatch Mosley’s consciousness, because while Money was nearly arrogant as Lomachenko he was a controlfreak, not a gambler, in the ring.
That was a different time altogether and a pay-per-view event. Lomachenko knows he must entertain in the ring in a way Mayweather did not, as there will be no 24/7, no pay-per-view, no absurd cable contracts; if Lomachenko makes a match dull as Mayweather-Canelo he can expect less money for his next mandatory defense, whatever pound-for-pound ratings say about it.
As you read this we’re all grateful one thing good, this fight on ESPN – the most meaningful event on basic cable in decades – came out our woeful pandemic. If this fight goes the way it probably will you’ll wake up disappointed Sunday morning, yes, but at least it won’t be a disappointment compounded by the regret of wasting another $80.
I’ll take Lomachenko, UD-12.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
