Boxing Challenge: Lopez shocks Lomachenko

 IBF lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez entered his lightweight unification fight against the thought to be unbeatable WBA and WBO champion Vasyl Lomachenko with plenty to back up after Lopez and his father had spent much of the last year crowing about how Lopez was equipped to defeat the two-time Olympic and three-division champion.

There will be no crow eaten by Team Lopez on this night as Lopez upset Lomachenko via unanimous decision in a fight that might be looked at equally at what Lopez did do and what Lomachenko did not.

The scores were far too wide with a 119-110 Lopez that will comfortably fit into the Hamburglar file of terrible scorecards by the usually reliable Julie Lederman, but I have no problem with Lopez receiving a nod.

Twitter seemed pretty varied in its thoughts with many having Lopez winning by as wide as nine rounds to three and others scoring it as narrow as an even split of six rounds each for a draw.

I watched the fight live "virtually" with Fred Landucci and after the fight, I counted my score as even at 114, but I didn't feel comfortable and felt that I needed to rewatch the fight immediately before outside sources begin to sink in with their cards.

Upon the rewatch, I gave Lomachenko one round that I scored for Lopez in the rewatch, and another that I gave to him could have been scored for either fighter, so the rewatch score was 115-113 or 116-112 for Lopez.

I still think Lomachenko landed the bigger shots in the second, but it's not unfair to not give him another until the eighth round.

I gave Lomachenko rounds eight through eleven and Lopez won the final round.

There were no knockdowns and neither fighter was seriously hurt in the fight, but what it really came to down to was this- Lomachenko moved too much for the first half of the fight and didn't throw nearly enough punches in that half.

When Lomachenko threw, he was effective and found his target often- he simply didn't do it enough to grab this one from the fire.

I wouldn't be against a rematch, but I'm not sure we will see one.

Lomachenko certainly deserves one, if he wants it, but there was not a rematch clause in the contract and it would be entirely up to the Lopez team to provide it.

Lopez certainly was tiring down the stretch and gave it all in winning the final round, but Lomachenko can make a case that a rematch would be different as he could start earlier in the fight.

Lopez may move up to junior welterweight, but I love the idea of Lopez staying around for a while at lightweight against other talented young fighters such as WBC champion Devin Haney, Ryan Garcia, and Gervonta Davis.

I would like the idea of Lopez against the Josh Taylor-Jose Ramirez winner at junior welter, but I'd bet that winner moves to 147 for a Terence Crawford match and would leave Lopez in a vacant title addition, which I don't like nearly as much.

Lomachenko has been mentioned as a candidate to return to the 130-pound division for years due to his smallish stature at lightweight and there are some interesting fights there, should he do so.

The winner of December's WBC title fight with champion Miguel Berchelt against former WBO featherweight champion Oscar Valdez would be an excellent option for Lomachenko.

Berchelt, in particular, has been a rumored Lomachenko opponent for years and both are promoted by Top Rank as is WBO champion, Jamel Herring.

The only issue for Lomachenko is that there likely isn't a ton of money in dropping back down to 130 other than maybe the Berchelt-Valdez winner and I'm not sure any of the other fighters are much of a challenge to him.

In the co-feature, junior welterweight Arnold Barboza won a unanimous decision over former world title challenger Alex Saucedo in a fight that was more exciting than expected.

The faster Barboza was expected to box more, but he stood and engaged the aggressive Saucedo often and was able to win many of those exchanges.

Saucedo did score the fight's only knockdown when a hook awkwardly sent Barboza to the floor in the seventh.

The knockdown wasn't scored officially until between rounds, when the Nevada replay rules scored it correctly.

I scored Barboza a 95-94 winner (6-4 minus the knockdown) and when the junior welterweight divisional gold rush begins after the expected leaving of the division by the Taylor-Ramirez winner, Barboza may be in line for one of those titles.

In the Boxing Challenge, Ramon Malpica outscored me two points to zero to slice my lead to 131-122.

Boxing Challenge: Saucedo wins in ring return

Another rather brief recap due to time constraints on the Tuesday Top Rank card...

In the main event, junior welterweight Alex Saucedo won via a unanimous decision over Sonny Frederickson.
Saucedo had fought only one round (a blowout over Rod Salka) since his unsuccessful WBO title challenge to Maurice Hooker in November 2018.
The exciting Oklahoma slugger had his moments against Hooker (knocking Hooker down in round two), but had trouble getting inside of the longer reach of Hooker and vowed to change his style a bit.
I saw signs of some maturity and subtlety from Saucedo, who threw well over 800 punches in overwhelming a game, but limited Frederickson, but I'll reserve judgment on the final verdict when I see Saucedo against top ten competition before rendering it a success.
No knockdowns in this one, although Saucedo did hurt Frederickson in the first round with a right hand. I scored Saucedo a 99-91 winner which agreed with one judge.

The semi-main had more adventure outside the ring with the father and trainer of welterweight Josue Vargas leaving the bubble before the fight and not being allowed to re-enter for the bout.
His son won a unanimous decision over Sal Briceno (I scored 98-92) with Vargas losing two front teeth in the fourth round and a bad eye gash in the sixth.

Ramon Malpica and I each earned three points on the night in the boxing challenge on the evening.
I lead the challenge 62-54.

Boxing Challenge: Hooker stops Saucedo

Everything seemed to be in the favor of Alex Saucedo for his attempt to lift the WBO junior welterweight title from Maurice Hooker,
Saucedo had the home advantage in Oklahoma City, his promoter (Top Rank), his television network (ESPN) and the small ring to suit his aggressive style and not the large ring preferred by the rangy Hooker.
Everything was in place to bring Saucedo the title and Top Rank, the next big fight for ESPN, which would be a Saucedo unification with WBC champion Jose Ramirez, which why Top Rank overpaid Hooker in order to win the purse bid to gain their fighter those advantages.

However, all of those advantages couldn't overcome one problem - Saucedo's inability to make the right hand of Hooker miss and the result was Hooker retaining his title and taking it back to DAZN with a seventh-round knockout.
It wasn't easy though, as the power-punching challenger dropped Hooker with a second round right hand and Hooker was dazed upon rising from the floor, but Hooker managed to clear his head and even though I had Hooker losing the third round on my card, you had the feeling that Saucedo might have seen his best opportunity go across the bow.
Hooker then began to turn the tide and at the end of the sixth round-I tweeted that I thought that I saw a look of resignation on the face of Salcedo, which usually is not a good sign.
It wasn't as Hooker stung Salcedo seconds into the seventh round and drove a staggered Salcedo into the ropes, which the referee correctly scored a knockdown as only the ropes kept Salcedo from falling.
Hooker jumped upon Salcedo after the eight count and landed several uncontested right hands which forced the referee to end the bout.

The Hooker victory ruined Top Rank's plans for a spring unification bout with WBC champion Jose Ramirez as noted earlier, but Hooker and promoter Eddie Hearn both invited Ramirez for a unification fight anyway, but the key words belonged to Hooker "come on over to DAZN", which is the television network for Hearn's fighters and where Top Rank fighters seldom tread.
Since Top Rank signed their deal with ESPN, only Oleksandr Gzovdyk has crossed lines for a challenge of Adonis Stevenson in two weeks on Showtime on another network, so I'm doubtful that fight is able to be negotiated unless Hearn is willing to bring Hooker back to ESPN.
If this is how Top Rank (or any other promoter with a platform deal) is going to talk contract with opposing promoters, don't count on a lot of these big inter-promotional fights to be signed.
Golden Boy brought Jorge Linares over to make a Vasyl Lomachenko happen and Eddie Hearn honored the purse bid to have Hooker defend here and that means that when a fighter really wants to make a fight it can be made, but if this is indeed the line in the sand for Top Rank, get ready to wait.

The co-feature (shown on ESPN +) saw Egid Kaviliauskas overcome a headbutt in the second round to knock out Robert Arriaza in the third round in a welterweight eliminator from the WBO.
Kaviliauskas used a right hand to the side of the head to floor Arriaza but added a punch to Arriaza while he was down, which rightfully angered the Arriaza camp, but I doubt that it would have changed the outcome.
Give Kaviliauskas credit for the rally with such a bad cut sending plenty of crimson flowing down his face, but not too much because we really don't know how good Arriaza really was.
The win will give Kaviliauskas the mandatory position for WBO champion Terence Crawford, also promoted by Top Rank, who watched the fight from ringside between Twitter call-outs of IBF kingpin Errol Spence, who also was watching in support of fellow Dallas native Maurice Hooker.
I don't think Crawford should be too concerned about Kaviliauskas, who fights more crudely than his two-time Olympian status would suggest nor should he worry too much about fighting Errol Spence anytime soon either.



The problem in making a Spence-Crawford fight is this- Spence is signed with PBC, who is the company least likely to allow their elite fighters to fight another elite fighter from another promoter.
Crawford is with Top Rank, which brings its own issues, but has more of a track record of making tough fights, should their fighter demand it, but of course, would prefer matching their fighters with Crawford such as Kaviliauskas.

Spence has more options with a fight in March against lightweight champ Mikey Garcia, which looks good on paper, but likely won't be more than an overpowering of Garcia in the ring and with WBA champ Keith Thurman and WBC champ Shawn Porter in the PBC stable, while Crawford doesn't have nearly as many options, unless Vasyl Lomachenko wants to make a Garcia-like leap to challenge him, so Crawford needs Spence more than vice-versa for now.

The boxing game just makes you cringe sometimes
Crawford likes to fight often but has problems finding suitable opponents.
Spence has plenty of suitable opponents but doesn't seem to want to fight very often, as he will have fought one round in 14 months by the time he fights Garcia.
WBC champion Shawn Porter seems to be willing to fight anyone, but he's never been the preferred welterweight of his own promoter and few of even his fellow PBC fighters want to fight him unless a sanctioning body forces them to and even if you defeat Porter, it's a rugged grueling fight that leaves more of you behind than you would prefer.
WBA beltholder Keith Thurman's activity in the ring makes Spence's ring time look like he's fighting constantly with only one fight in twenty-two months (and that fight was preceded by another nine months of inactivity before that) when he finally returns against shopworn Josesito Lopez in an understandable squash match to chip some rust off.
The welterweight champions talk about settling who's best, but it's going to be quite a while to see just who is the best of them all.

The funny part of the Spence-Crawford whatever that was video above was Spence's comments that Crawford was "too small and light in the ass" and could be taken as Crawford was too little to make such an encounter interesting, yet Spence, who will have fought one round in 14 months by the time he fights Garcia, has no problems fighting the even smaller Garcia.
Only in the boxing business.

In the boxing challenge, I earned two points for the Kaviliauskas win, while Ramon Malpica scored one.
Both of us selected Alex Saucedo to defeat Maurice Hooker.
I still lead the challenge 188-165

Boxing Notes

Catching up on a few notes from the boxing world before the weekend's bouts and first, a big shout out to Vincent Samano, who I was fortunate enough (More on this during the road trip posts) to meet in Akron.
Vince made a special visit to meet me and I loved talking to him about the fight game.
What a great guy and I only wish I had more time to talk about the past greats in the game.

Ramon Malpica did send me his picks for the two fight card on ESPN from Top Rank before I left town and I ran out of time to post them for the boxing challenge.
Ramon (and I) each picked the winners correctly, but I'm not going to add them to the total for the challenge.
As boring as the main event was (Gilberto Ramirez winning a dull unanimous decision over Roamer Angulo to retain his WBO super middleweight belt), the co-feature was about as good as you are going to find as Alex Saucedo defeated Lenny Zappavigna in the sixth round when Zappavigna's corner tossed in the proverbial towel midway through the stanza.
The term "War" is somewhat overused in boxing, but it is accurate in this case with both fighters badly hurt during the fight and both fighters battling through awful cuts, the title eliminator to determine the mandatory contender for newly crowned WBO junior welterweight champion Maurice Hooker has a legitimate case for fight of the year- it was that good.

James DeGale decided to vacate his IBF super middleweight title rather than face the interim champion Jose Uzcategui in a mandated bout.
Uzcategui was elevated to the full titleist and mandated to fight Caleb Plant in his first defense.
The exciting Uzcategui won the interim strap with a pounding of Andre Dirrell, who retired in his corner in February and looks to me to be entering his prime.
Plant, on the other hand, has defeated just one top 30 fighter (a decision over Porky Medina), is one of the more boring fighters to see, in my opinion, is a creation of Al Haymon's PBC, where Plant dates PBC reporter Jordan Hardy and is a thoroughly undeserving challenger.
As for DeGale, as much as I'd like to hit him for ducking Uzcategui, I understand why he gave the title up as he has a possible bout with the winner of the WBSS super middleweight final between George Groves and Callum Smith for far more money than Uzcategui and roughly the same risk.

The second year of the World Boxing Super Series will have American television with Eddie Hearn's streaming service DAZN.
This year, the WBSS will feature three weight classes with bantamweights, junior welterweights, and another division to be determined.
I wonder about the long-term viability of DAZN as sooner or later there comes a breaking point for all consumers for extra channels etc and DAZN is expected to be in the range of 20-25 dollars a month, more than Showtime and far more than ESPN+.

I've been critical on occasion of Golden Boy Promotions, but give them credit for caring somewhat about boxing fans and their wallet with an agreement to show cards on Facebook.
Their first event looks to be a pretty decent one with WBA "regular" (Yuck) featherweight champion Jesus Rojas defending his minor trinket against Joseph Diaz, who recently lost a decision to WBC champion Gary Russell on Showtime.
I always like when quality shows are available for free as that is how the interest in the product grows.
To me, boxing lost its way in the 1990's when the sport went away from the networks and moved almost exclusively to premium cable and pay per view.
Returning and using various different avenues to have their products find their way to the eyes to any potential fans is always a great idea.

I'm going to try to return with a road trip post tonight...