Top Rank did a disservice to Lomachenko:- I wanted to address first how Top Rank and Bob Arum did a disservice to Lomachenko by not helping him or even showing any intent for Loma to gain any kind of advantage during negotiations, Now that they have Shakur in lightweight which is their priority, looks like they have already moved on from Loma and Loma was already fighting a losing battle. Here are certain aspects during negotiations which were overlooked by Top Rank and the concerns from Team Lomachenko were not addressed both by Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) and Bob Arum and company.
When a fighter of foreign nationality is fighting, he expects fair judging and to guarantee that the best the commission can do and promoters can help them get is appoint officials from both fighter’s nationalities so that the outcome is fair and not a biased one. That was missing in this case, all 3 judges were of USA nationality. What’s even more bizarre is that Arum when asked about this, this was his response during the post-fight conference
That’s a question that should be asked of the commission. They appoint judges. When one side objects to a judge, they generally change them. In this case, they wouldn’t change them. It seems sort of strange to me when you have an American fighting a Ukrainian and all officials are American. I mean, it doesn’t happen that way in any other place in the world.
This is strange from Top Rank and Bob Arum, the fact that they knew that commission had appointed all 3 officials from the USA and as a promoter didn’t show any intent of protesting only goes to show one thing, they just didn’t care about Loma.
Another interesting thing is that Klimas who is Lomachenko’s manager had protested about Dave Moretti being one of the officials to the commission but again it was rejected and Top Rank and Bob Arum didn’t again interfere, especially after Dave Moretti scored the Tank-Ryan fight and scoring a 10-10 for 2nd round where Tank had dropped Ryan on the canvas, that fight presented us and the commission with enough evidence, that Dave Moretti wasn’t qualified anymore to judge a fight, still nothing was done about it and he was allowed to judge and commit a blunder yet again and get away with it.
We all know that Haney is too big to be a lightweight and he is a few fights away from moving to junior welterweight. Allowing the weigh in being 36 hrs before the ring walk, which isn’t usual gives Haney a significant advantage to rehydrate and recover. As a promotional company I feel you stand for your fighter and make sure he has all the possible advantages in his favour. Nothing was done and no kind of intent was even shown from Bob Arum and Top Rank for Lomachenko to help him in these negotiations. So that’s why I think Bob Arum thought process is evident that their priority is Shakur at the moment and you won’t see this kind of advantage taken away from Shakur in future fights because Top Rank would make sure that it doesn’t happen.
Post-fight thoughts:- Now let’s talk about the actual fight, This fight would go down as one of those few fights, which saw an unimaginable amount of repeat watch on Youtube to decide on the outcome of who won. This fight was that close. There were a bunch of reaction/debate videos made on who won the fight and so forth. There were even discussions on how fights are scored or should be scored and based on that who should have won the fight. The aftermath made boxing Twitter alive at least for a week.
If you go by the book and how fights are scored which is based on Effective Aggression, Solid Defense, Hard and Clear punches and Who is controlling the fight. If you apply that theory in this fight, Haney’s game plan and execution in the fight do not qualify or fit in any of the categories.
Before the fight, there was this general narrative of how Haney had a significant reach advantage, Loma would not be able to close the distance and how Haney would use his best weapon which was his jab all night long to keep Loma at bay and win the fight easily. Well, that never happened in the fight and this is why we love the sport so much because it teaches us something new every time. Haney just landed 20 jabs out of 188 thrown with a connect percentage of 10.6. That’s awful and shows how Loma made him miss with his jab all day long and considering that’s your best move and if it ain’t working, you are in trouble and that’s not effective aggression. Haney never made adjustments to his jab throughout the fight and Lomachenko showed great defense. Considering Haney’s offense starts with the jab and that jab was ineffective Haney couldn’t get going with his right hand to the head. So Haney had to move to the body, now don’t get me wrong Haney landed a lot of body shots and some even good ones, but not everything he connected landed cleanly and that’s why that can’t as qualified as effective aggression since some of those were partially blocked by Loma’s elbow and some didn’t even land cleanly. Another reason why in this case Body shots can’t be qualified as effective aggression is because body shots intend to slow you down and empty your gas tank late in the fight which wasn’t the case. Loma came in gun’s blazing in 2nd half of the fight, so the body shots weren’t a factor. There was no intent from Haney to go headhunting in the fight and that’s why there were no eye-catching shots from him. Loma on the contrary was in full mood to go for the head, his left hand was doing significant damage every time it landed snapping Haney’s head back and it landed on numerous occasions.
Loma outlanded Haney when it comes to jabs and power punches, showed effective aggression and landed more eye-catching shots in the fight. The fight was completely one-sided when it comes to landing eye-catching shots and showed great defense by making Haney miss with his jab and right hands, had Haney hurt badly in the 10th and 11th rounds, controlled the fight, if that’s not enough to win a fight, I am not sure, what is! Also if you observe after round 9, Haney was looking for answers from his corner and you can hear Haney saying that those left hands are coming more than once and was looking for answers on how to adjust. Even in the aftermath which Top Rank released recently, you can see before the scorecards are announced, Haney’s team are saying “Look it was close “. Haney himself looked worried and had doubts about the outcome and he was even heard saying “They taking long with the scores”. Loma’s team on the other side were certain they won.
I had Loma winning the fight 7-5 in his favour, like the majority of the people. FightHub TV did a poll asking who won between Loma-Haney and 132k people voted in total out of which 72% voted in favour of Loma and only 16% thought Haney won with the other 12% thinking it was a draw. That’s quite a sample of data to conclude that Loma won and that kind of analytics will question and make it controversial on why the officials saw it otherwise or were in the minority. Even pro fighters like Shakur, Linares, Keyshawn and Jamaine Ortiz who had initially picked Haney to win thought Loma won. Had Loma been awarded the decision that night, there wouldn’t have been any kind of controversy or outrage from the fans which you saw which is enough to tell that the wrong guy was awarded the decision.
In fights like GGG-Canelo 1, Ward-Kovalev 1, Taylor-Catterall and lately Romero-Barroso and now Haney-Loma, you can see a pattern in who gets the nod in a close fight. A fighter that’s more marketable, more bankable, will help the networks make more money and has a lot more years left in the sport, a fighter who has these kinds of attributes gets the nod always, it’s unfortunate but the politics does play a part in deciding the outcome of the fight. And this kind of outcome is justified with the most ridiculous statement and a statement that has been thrown in the sport for so many years and the statement is “You have to decisively beat the champ to take the belts away from the champ”. Why don’t they understand that if 2 equally skilled fighters are fighting, it’s not going to be easy to knock down fighters and not going to end up being completely one-sided and fights are going to go the distance. In those situations even if you hurt the current champ and if it’s a close fight, the challenger should get the nod. Imagine if this happens in the upcoming Spence-Crawford fight where it’s a super close fight but Crawford has a moment in the fight where he has Spence hurt but isn’t dropped on the canvas. If the fight goes the distance, the decision goes to Spence because Spence has 3 belts and Crawford didn’t beat the champ decisively. Wouldn’t everyone feel that Crawford was robbed, that’s the case here as well.
Where do both fighters go from here:- Well if Haney stays at 135 which is highly unlikely but if he does, he has to go for the rematch with Loma, there is a huge buzz around that fight, it’s already hyped and financially it makes more sense at the moment rather than the fight with Shakur. But if Haney chooses to go junior welterweight, then I think we get to see Loma vs Shakur, that’s the fight that would make sense for both fighters. However, if the Haney-Loma rematch is on, then Shakur should target a fight with Jamaine Ortiz which I believe would be Shakur’s toughest test to date. A lot of this matchup depends on what Haney decides to do in the coming months, so we will have to wait and see.
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