In a real surprising outcome, WBO super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko (7-1, 5 KOs) got former featherweight champion Nicholas Walters (26-1-1, 21 KOs) to quit after seven rounds on Saturday night at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. Walters looked befuddled all night long, but especially in rounds 4 thru 7.
Those were the rounds in which Lomachenko increased the speed of his attacks. After the 7th round ended, Walters walked back to his corner and told the referee Tony Weeks that he didn’t wish to continue fighting. The fight was then halted and Lomachenko was given the victory.
There wasn’t much action in 1, 2 and 3. It was a slow boxing match with Lomachenko controlling the action with speed and movements. Those were close rounds. It wasn’t a total domination at that point in the fight. To be sure, Walters landed some nice shots in the 3rd round. He fought well enough to win that round on my scorecard.
Lomachenko took control of the fight starting in the 4th round with his blistering fast attacks that left Walters helpless looking. Walters was trying to land single shots, but he was missing and landing a lot of lot low blows. Instead of adapting to what Lomachenko was doing by attacking him with body shots, Walters kept trying to connect to the head, and he was missing badly.
The fight got way out of hand after the 6th and 7th. Lomachenko started to attack all out in both of those rounds. Walters wasn’t ready for that kind of an attack. In the last minute of the 7th, Lomachenko was hitting Walters at will with power shots, and he had him looking slightly hurt as the round ended. The way that Lomachenko was beating up on Walters, it looked like the fight wouldn’t go more than one more round, because Walters was getting hit too much and he was no longer capable of blocking the speedy shots coming in at him.
It’s not surprising to the boxing world that Lomachenko won the fight tonight over Walters. After all, Lomchaneko was the favorite to win the fight. What was surprising is how easily Lomachenko won, and how Walters quit after the 7th. There’s no word yet that Walters suffered an injury of any kind. It just looked like he was getting overwhelmed with punches, and he lost his confidence in himself.
In the undercard, the light hitting undefeated welterweight contender Konstantin Ponomarev (31-0, 13 KOs) beat the highly experienced 33-year-old Silverio Ortiz (35-19, 17 KOs) by an 8 round unanimous decision. The three judges’ scores were 80-72, 80-72 and 80-72. The 24-year-old Ponomar outworked Ortiz by throwing a lot of shots. That’s the positive news for the Russian fighter. The negative thing about Ponomaev’s performance was his lack of power. Ponomarev looked very weak tonight in a way that suggests that he’ll never be a puncher. That’s going to be a problem that will likely limit how far Ponomarev can go in the 147lb division. He’s ranked IBF #5, WBC #6, WBO #7 at welterweight, but I’m not sure that he’s good enough to beat even the guys ranked below him much less the fighters ranked ahead of him.
Unbeaten light heavyweight Trevor McCumby (24-0, 19 KOs) beat Donovan George (25-7-2, 22 KOs) by a 1st round knockout. George hit the deck twice in the round.
Other boxing results:
Juan Ruiz TKO 1 Fernando Carcamo
Maxim Dadashev TKO 2 Efrain Cruz
