He’s got to be the best seven-fight pro on the planet.
Maybe ever.
And now, Vasyl Lomachenko has a big fight to match his status.
The WBO’s 130-pound champion will make the first defense of his newly-won crown?wrested five months ago from veteran Rocky Martinez?against rising ex-featherweight kingpin Nicholas Walters.
The bout will headline a World Championship Boxing show on HBO and will air immediately after the Saturday night replay of last week’s light heavyweight duel between Sergey Kovalev and Andre Ward.
Lomachenko, 28, turned pro on the heels of perhaps the greatest amateur career in history, stubbed his toe on rugged Orlando Salido in fight No. 2 and has since won five straight title bouts while climbing The Ring pound-for-pound ladder all the way to rung No. 7.
He’s a clear favorite to beat the 30-year-old Walters, who whipped veterans Vic Darchinyan and Nonito Donaire at 126 before losing his crown on the scales and heading four pounds north. He struggled to a majority draw?winding up even on two cards, losing on the third?in his weight-class debut against Jason Sosa last December, then hemmed and hawed his way into the showdown with Lomachenko.
Confidence, it seems, is no issue.
“Since he did lose to Salido, he can be as technical all he wants, but I am in the hurt business,” Walters said in a recent media conference call (via FightNews.com). “This is a gladiator sport and I fight all of my fights like that. I fight like a gladiator. He can come in with his technical fight on Saturday and I am going to be up for it and put on a helluva show.”
The bout serves as the main event in the 2,000th show promoted by ageless Top Rank boss Bob Arum, and the soon-to-be 85-year-old (he’ll celebrate his birthday on Dec. 8) was not shy about using heady words when it came to describing his newest stable star.
“Vasyl Lomachenko is technically the best fighter that I have seen since the early Muhammad Ali,” he said (via FightNews.com). “There is nobody that I have seen, and there have been a lot of great technical fighters that I have seen?Alexis Arguello was one, Floyd Mayweather certainly, Manny Pacquiao?but there has been nobody with the skills that Vasyl Lomachenko has.”
