Friday night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles California, in a fight streamed live on ESPN+, WBA/WBO lightweight champion Vasiliy Lomachenko (13-1, 10 KOs), the mercurial southpaw from Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, Ukraine, successfully defended his titles by crushing #1 ranked Anthony Crolla (34-7-3, 13 KOs), the former WBA lightweight champion from Manchester, England.
The knockout came 58 seconds into round four.
The reigning and defending was a 100:1 favorite going into the bout. Crolla was confident, however, despite the odds, even while admitting, ?Lomachenko?s a helluva fighter,? before adding, ?But no man is invincible. I?m going to expose him.?
At the opening bell, Loma proceeded to prove Crolla both right and wrong. He is a helluva fighter, and while he may not be invincible, it was the usually sturdy Crolla who was exposed in the end.
Relying on his trademark speed, fancy footwork, sophisticated punching, and sky-high ring IQ, Lomachenko prevented Crolla from mounting a sustained offense; or much of any offense at all. Without bothering to decipher his challenger?s intentions, Loma stalked his man from the outset, landing right hooks to the body and uppercuts to the head almost at will. Crolla tried to keep his distance, but did next to nothing to keep Loma at bay. Tentative, unable to let his hands go, the Mancunian absorbed shots both upstairs and down as the champ had his way with the man before him.
Lomachenko scored a technical knockdown in round three, with Crolla eating punches while being supported by the ropes. He survived the round, but his survival was short-lived. A picture-perfect right hook to the temple dropped Crolla face-first to the canvas less than a minute into round four. Referee Jack Reiss started to count, and then thought better of it, because Crolla was done for the night.
Numbers don?t lie, except when they do lie, and the number of punches landed by each man tells the story. Loma had a 72-12 edge in punches landed. It was one-sided. It was a mismatch. It was a slaughter.
In the co-main event, WBO super middleweight champion Gilberto ?Zurdo? Ramirez (40-0, 26 KOs), from Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico, in his first fight at light heavyweight, KO?d Tommy Karpency (29-7-1, 18 KOs), forcing the former world title challenger from Ada, Pennsylvania, to quit on his stool at the end of round four.
Entering the ring as a cruiserweight, ?Zurdo? was busier, younger and stronger than his opponent. He drew first blood from Karpency?s mouth in round two and second blood in the fourth from the bridge of Karpency?s nose. While he was busting up and breaking down the brave Pennsylvanian, who was looking for one big shot to turn things around, Ramirez landed meaningful shot after meaningful shot to the body and head and seemingly could not miss.
After Karpency called it quits, he said, ?My ribs are broke.?
When asked to evaluate Ramirez?s first fight at 175 pounds, Karpency, who had lost fights to Andrzej Fonfara and Nathan Cleverly in 2012, Adonis Stevenson in 2015, and Oleksandr Gvozdyk in 2016, said, ?He?s equal to the guys I fought, no better, no worse.?
