Vasily Lomachenko fighting on December 11th on ESPN

Vasily Lomachenko will be in the main event on December 11th on ESPN at Madison Square Garden in New York. Bob Arum told Dan Rafael that the former three-division world champion Lomachenko (15-2, 11 KOs) would be headlining on the December 11th date at MSG.

Lomachenko is popular in New York and can be counted on to bring a big crowd at MSG no matter who he’s matched against.

This will be the second fight for the two-time Olympic gold medalist Lomachenko, 33, since losing his WBA/WBC Franchise/WBO lightweight titles to Teofimo Lopez last October.

Arum isn’t saying who Lomachenko will be fighting, but these are good options for him:

• Richard Commey
• Jezreel Corrales
• Michel Rivera
• Yvan Mendy
• Jovanni Straffon
• Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero

Recently, Lomachenko bounced back from his 12 round decision loss to Teofimo by stopping top 10 ranked contender Masayoshi Nakatani in the ninth round on June 26th in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Four-belt undisputed 135-lb champion Teofimo (16-0, 12 KOs) was previously a possible opponent for Lomachenko to fight in December. Still, it looks like Teo will be stuck defending against his IBF mandatory George Kambosos Jr on a Triller PPV card at some point. That fight is still up in the air right now.

If Teofimo can free himself up from the Kambosos Jr fight, he can make good money facing Lomachenko in a rematch on ESPN PPV in December. That’s the fight that the boxing public wants to see.

The two could have already fought the rematch if Teofimo hadn’t said no when Lomachenko asked for a second fight, which was strange because it gave the impression to fans that Teo didn’t like the idea of facing Loma a second time.

Ultimately, Teofimo would have been better off taking the fight because now he’s missed a payday by wasting time trying to set up a fight against his little-known IBF mandatory Kambosos Jr.

If Teofimo vacated the IBF strap, he could have fought Lomachenko and made good money rather than sitting on the sidelines for the last nine months.

Lomachenko looked great in destroying Nakatani in their main event fight on ESPN. This was a different Loma than the one that had fought poorly in the first half of his fight with Teofimo last October.

Instead of starting slowly, Lomachenko went on the attack early, taking Nakatani with shows and getting out of the way of his return fire. In the fifth, Lomachenko dropped Nakatani after catching him with some shots while in a clinch.

In that instance, Lomachenko showed what fighters are supposed to do when their opponents tie them up. He kept punching, forcing Nakatani to let go and step back to try and avoid Loma’s shots.

It didn’t work, though, as Lomachenko dropped Nakatani while he was in the retreat mode.