Bob Arum says Vasyl Lomachenko will return to his “old form” for his fight this Saturday night when he challenges Devin Haney for his undisputed lightweight championship at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
The Top Rank CEO Arum says the reason for Lomachenko’s off performance in his last fight against Jamaine Ortiz is because he was coming back from the battlefield in Ukraine, and he’s been out of the ring for close to a year since his previous bout against Richard Commey in December 2021.
For this fight against Haney (29-0, 15 KOs), Lomachenko (17-2, 11 KOs) has had a full training camp to prepare, and he’ll be 100% ready on Saturday night to contest for the four belts.
It’s difficult to know how this fight will go because although Haney has looked great in his last two fights, he did it against what some would say was a B-level fighter in George Kambosos Jr.
To be sure, Kambosos was good enough to pull an upset over Teofimo Lopez in 2021, but the New Yorker was weight-drained, injured, blithering, useless basketcase on the night.
Perhaps a more accurate picture of how good Haney is came from his fights against Joseph Diaz and Jorge Linares in 2021. Those were really tough fights for Haney, and he didn’t resemble in any way an A-level fighter against those guys.
“He’s been here quite a while, with his whole family, preparing for the fight, and he’s fit and ready, and he looks tremendous, and he’s going to be the old Loma,” said Bob Arum to ProBox TV, predicting that Vasyl Lomachenko will be in top form for his fight against Devin Haney on Saturday.
“I’ve never seen Loma look as fit. People looked at Loma and said, ‘Well, he didn’t look as good in his last fight.’ True. But he was coming from the battlefield, and he fought a pretty good guy, and he handled it, but he struggled a little bit,” said Arum about Lomachenko’s last fight against Jamaine Ortiz.
“This is going to be a hell of a fight. I don’t know who is going to win. One night I believe it’s going to be Haney, and the next night I believe it’s going to be Loma, but it’s a hell of a fight,” said Arum.
“There’s a lot of action on the fight, betting action. So I’m looking forward to Saturday night. It’s competitive. What do I mean by competitive? There’s an argument on each side who’s going to win the fight, and that’s what you need. A competitive match-up, and the better guy will win the fight.
“When Loma walks in, we’ll have blue & yellow lights all over. A salute to his country, the gallant people in Ukraine. When the anthems are played, particularly the Ukrainian national anthem,I think a lot of people will acknowledge how the Ukrainians have fought against the aggressors in Russia and will appreciate Loma and his compatriots.
“He’s terrific, and he had to do it not only once but twice in so far away from his country traveling the world to go to Australia for those two victories,” said Arum about Haney.
