The president Top Rank Todd Dubeff confirmed insider rumors that Ukrainian ex-lightweight hegemon Vasily Lomachenko (16-2, 11 KOs) is returning to the ring and plans to fight his next fight in October in America.
The ex-champion had a chance this summer to fight for all the division belts with Australian George Kambosos Jr. (20-1, 10 KOs), but he refused the fight due to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine – he stayed at home to help defend the country in composition of the defense forces.
“All of us in the company treated his decision with respect and understanding,”
Dubeff says. “For this reason, we have not been looking for any options for him lately. We agreed that as soon as he decides to resume his career, he will inform us about it himself. And so his team contacted us and said that he would be ready to fight the next fight in October.
The problem is that almost all the top fighters in the division are already taken. But this fact does not upset Duboff, because “Lomachenko has not been in the ring for almost a year. We don’t even know what condition he’s in. But this does not mean that we will not find him the proper level of an opponent. After all, in this weight category we are very strong. Knowing Lomachenko, even if we offer him a fight with (undisputed division champion) Devin Haney, he will almost certainly accept it. That’s the way he is. It’s true, he really, really wants all the championship belts back.”
Alas, the fight with Haney is a priori impossible for the reason that the absolute champion must first have a rematch with the same Kambosos, from whom he took away all the belts in the summer.
In October 2020, WBA Super, WBC Franchise and WBO title holder Lomachenko lost in unification to American IBF champion Teofimo Lopez. Last year, the Ukrainian entered the ring twice – the middle peasant from Japan, Masayoshi Nakatani, and the ex-champion from Ghana, Richard Commey, were alternately beaten.
What would the confrontations in the Davis-Haney-Lomachenko triangle look like? Reasoned analysis from the ex-champion. In early July, a Ukrainian responded to a Russian missile attack on a resort near Odessa. Almost.
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