Lomachenko

With a potential undisputed lightweight title showdown on the line, former three-weight world champion Vasiliy "Loma" Lomachenko had to dig deep.

I’m happy to come back in the ring and make this a great show," Lomachenko said. With a potential undisputed lightweight title showdown on the line, former three-weight world champion Vasiliy "Loma" Lomachenko had to dig deep. Ortiz came out firing his jab in the opening round, as Lomachenko sustained some bruising under his right eye.

The two-time Olympic gold medalist and three-division world champion entered his bout Saturday at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York against ...

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Lomachenko had a much tougher night than many expected, but eventually came away victorious. Let's take a look at what Ortiz brought that worked so well, ...

He said it before the fight, and again face-to-face with him afterwards, that he’ll give up pretty much all necessary concessions to get the fight made, just as Haney did himself to get the shot at Kambosos previously. Loma was able to finally get his circling movement going, and this time Ortiz wasn’t able to curtail it, and by the end he was getting him enough of balance that he was able to consistently win the little shoving matches in the clinch too. That second half dominance was ultimately decisive, and Lomachenko moves on to, hopefully, take a crack at undisputed champion Devin Haney- but Ortiz comes away with an invaluable experience and a huge bump in his stock in the division. And as he responded to that by pushing the harder and trying to keep Loma from circling by forcing him back, he did, as he hadn’t to this point in the fight, start to come just a little heavy over his front foot- and the uppercuts were waiting. To his credit, Ortiz never quite crashed, energy-wise, but he clearly began to slow, and that opened up another problem. He might be the younger man, less worn by injury and more active more recently in the boxing ring, but Ortiz had never been 12 rounds before — heck, he’d only been 10 twice. He used those advantages wisely, bringing new wrinkles in at the right time and dialing right back on a previous tendency to just throw everything and see what sticks. Lomachenko hadn’t had much joy getting inside and working his combinations because of the threat of Ortiz’ right hand down the middle, but in an open-stance matchup, southpaw vs orthodox, if one fighter can get round the lead side of their opponent they have a lot of room to work. But, while he’d done very well so far to keep those technical mistakes from spoiling the show, this was when the last physical aspect started to rear its head, and it was in Lomachenko’s favour. Lomachenko is adept at this kind of thing and he quickly started slipping under Ortiz’ jab and stepping to his right (Ortiz’ left). He’s not, though, used to being matched for speed — even his loss to Teofimo Lopez was more a case of having just enough speed to match the timing to cause him problems. Let’s take a look at the game of adjustment and counter-adjustment that played out.