Vasily Lomachenko (18-3, 12 KOs) took former unified lightweight champion George Kambosos Jr. (21-3, 10 KOs) to school, beating the daylights out of him in scoring an 11th round knockout to win the vacant IBF lightweight title on Saturday night in their headliner in front of a sold-out RAC Arena in Perth, Australia.
The end came at 2:49 of round 11 after Lomachenko knocked a tired and hurt Kambosos to the canvas twice with perfectly placed lefts to the midsection. There were actually three knockdowns in the round.
Lomachenko dropped Kambosos with a left to the head leading up to the two body shot knockdowns, but the referee ruled it a slip. The replay showed that Kambosos went down from the hard left to the head that Lomachenko hit him with.
In a highly controversial fight, Cherneka Johnson (16-2, 6 KOs) defeated female bantamweight champion Nina Hughes (6-1, 2 KOs) by a questionable 10-round majority decision.
The judges scores were 96-94, 98-92, and 95-95. Hughes fought well enough to deserve the victory, but the judges saw in Cherneka’s favor.
Pedro Guevara (42-4-1, 24 KOs) defeated Andrew Moloney (26-4, 16 KOs) by a competitive 12-round split decision to capture the WBC interim super flyweight title. The rounds were hard to score because both fighters had their money.
In the end, the difference was Guevara’s body attack and his high work rate. He threw constant shots, nailing Moloney with hard punches to the body and taking his return fire without any problems.
The body attack seemed to weaken Moloney in the championship rounds, as he wasn’t throwing as much and was getting nailed by hard shots from Guevara. The judges’ scores were 115-113, 115-113 for Guevara, and 116-113 for Moloney.
After the fight, Moloney, 33, announced his retirement. He felt that he’d been given a raw deal with the scoring, and didn’t want to continue in the sport.
George Kambosos Jr. will fight Vasily Lomachenko for the vacant IBF 135-lb title tonight at the RAC Arena in Perth, Australia. This is it for both of these highly ranked lightweights, who will fight live on ESPN and ESPN+ in a 12-rounder.
Imam Khataev tore into Ricards Bolotniks with a merciless barrage of body shots, leaving no questions about his dominance in the light-heavyweight division. This undefeated brawler, sitting pretty at 7-0, continues his streak of not just winning, but annihilating his opponents with finishes in all his bouts. At the event in Perth, Khataev unleashed a flurry of savage right hands, targeting Bolotniks’ mid-section like a sledgehammer to drywall. Bolotniks hit the mat three times in the sixth round alone, each one a testament to Khataev’s brutal precision.