Loma won't fight again this year, ending talks for fall Tank bout
But Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says IBF lightweight titlist is not planning to retire and will box again 2025
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Although the discussions for a November unification fight between WBA lightweight titlist Gervonta “Tank” Davis and IBF counterpart Vasiliy Lomachenko ended on Friday, Lomachenko is not retiring as many have speculated.
“He said. ‘I am not retiring.’ That was clear, clear, clear from the conversation. He was emphatic about it,” Top Rank chairman Bob Arum, Lomachenko’s career-long promoter, told Fight Freaks Unite on Monday.
Arum was recounting a conversation he had with Lomachenko, manager Egis Klimas and Anatoly Lomachenko, Vasiliy’s father and trainer, at lunch on Friday at a Los Angeles restaurant Klimas is a partner in.
“All I can talk about is the conversation at lunch,” Arum said. “It was the first time that I, and probably Egis, ever discussed that the plan was not to fight (again) this year.”
Arum said Lomachenko, the three-division champion, former pound-for-pound king, and two-time Olympic gold medalist, would be back in action in 2025 and said at that point they might be able to finalize a fight with Davis, which is viewed by many as the best fight that can be made in the 135-pound division.
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“He said that he’s gonna spend a couple of weeks here in the states and then he’s gonna go back to Ukraine, because the kids are in school and he wants to spend the time with them and not training, particularly with the war going on and all that, and that he definitely is not retiring and next year he’d want to fight,” Arum said. “The discussion was about not fighting this year and fighting next year, and other than that we had a really social time. It was a lovely afternoon.”
Top Rank and Premier Boxing Champions had been negotiating terms for the unification fight to take place as a pay-per-view main event in November — until Lomachenko told his team he was going to take off the rest of 2024, which came as a surprise to them.
“Loma is not in the mood right now. He doesn't have the motivation at the moment,” Klimas told boxing writer Steve Kim. “He's taking off. He wants to spend more time with the family. … With Loma, just money is not what motivates him. He doesn’t take anything just because of money. You can offer him millions, tens of millions of dollars. If he doesn’t have motivation, he’s not ready to prepare for the fight.”
Before Lomachenko (18-3, 12 KOs), 36, ended a one-year off in May for his first fight since a disputed decision loss to then-undisputed lightweight champion Devin Haney, Lomachenko considered retirement. Ultimately, it was his father who convinced him to come back for another title run.
Lomachenko traveled to Australia to fight former unified champion George Kambosos Jr. in his country for the vacant IBF belt. Lomachenko delivered a tour de force in his best performance in years as he dominated and knocked Kambosos down twice in the 11th round and stopped him.
Then the prospect of the fight with Davis came up and Arum said Klimas gave Top Rank the green light to pursue it and conversations with Luis DeCubas Jr. of PBC began. Nobody at Top Rank had spoken directly with Lomachenko about it, which is not unusual as the pursuit of any fight negotiation typically would run through the manager.
“Egis certainly was in favor of it and he was the only one we had talked to and we started negotiating in good faith with Luis De Cubas and we were making a lot of progress, but at that particular point nobody ever discussed anything with Lomachenko.
“Egis assumed he was (interested) in the fight. He didn’t know that Loma would take the position that he didn’t want to fight this year. There’s a war going on (in his native Ukraine), he has a family, and he was explaining (to us at lunch) that he has made a lot of money in his career fighting and doesn’t piss away his money, so he’s quite well fixed.”
Some have accused Lomachenko of ducking Davis but a few years ago it was Davis’ then promoter Floyd Mayweather who said he had no intention of making a fight for him with Lomachenko at that time.
It remains to be seen what Davis (30-0, 28 KO), 29, of Baltimore, will do for a second fight this year following his devastating eighth-round knockout of Frank Martin to retain his title on June 15 in Las Vegas.
With Lomachenko out of the picture perhaps it would open the door to a unification fight with WBC titlist Shakur Stevenson, who recently became a free agent with the expiration of his Top Rank contract earlier this month. He has said he is interested in fighting Davis, who has also shown at least a lukewarm interest in the bout.
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Lomachenko photo: Mikey Williams/Top Rank
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I'm a bit disappointed. I would've bought Loma vs Tank. Loma has seemed a bit mentally fragile for a while. The first six or seven rounds versus Teófimo. Crying over a close loss to Haney. Now this. Tank Davis and PBC in a tough spot. Gotta find legitimate opponents, that'll also sell a PPV. No more of even the Frank Martin types. Shakur ain't hot right now. Zepeda ain't quite ready. Needs a title and the legitimacy that brings. Pitbull or Teófimo may be the best of some imperfect choices. At least Teófimo has ESPN and his personality to help sell a fight. God knows Amazon's not lifting a finger lol.
Bummer, not only that an actual legit test for Tank was on the schedule (his long list of B and C level opponents is getting tiresome), but given that Loma wan a vacant IBF belt, he’ll have a mandatory to deal with upon his return, and given the IBFs habit of ridiculous rankings, and the current #1 Zepeda likely taking a different route, we might get Loma vs some obscure #1 when the time comes, wasting the last of his good years.
There is only bad news from this decision.