Vasyl Lomachenko vs. Miguel Marriaga on August 5

Boxingnews24.com

By Chris Williams: Rather than take a fight with unbeaten Guillermo Rigondeaux, WBO World super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko will be facing the recently twice beaten featherweight Miguel Marriaga (25-2, 21 KOs) next month on August 5 on at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, California. Lomachenko-Marriaga will be televised on ESPN and ESPN Deportes starting at 10:00 p.m. ET. This should be an entertaining fight if Marriaga has anything left from the punishment he absorbed in his recent loss.

I’m not sure that Marriaga deserves a title shot after losing his last fight, but this is boxing. The promoters do things differently in this sport compared to other sports like the NFL. You have to earn your way to the Super Bowl by winning. In boxing, you can lose your last fight and then get a world title shot, which is what we’re seeing with Marriaga losing his last and now getting a title shot against Lomachenko.

The Top Rank promoted Lomachenko will be able to be seen by a lot of boxing fans with his fights being televised on ESPN rather than HBO or on Top Rank PPV. This would appear to be a way for Top Rank to make Lomachenko a bigger name in order to get him ready to crossover to PPV in the future. Some promoters move their fighters into PPV far too quickly before they’ve picked up a big enough audience in order to bring in a lot of PPV buys.

By having Lomachenko’s fights on ESPN, it could help make him a star if he stays on this network long enough. Lomachenko might also need to make his fights a little more entertaining as well by focusing more on his offense and less on his defense. Lomachenko puts a lot of energy on not getting hit in his fights, and it makes is dull sometimes. We already know the 2-time Olympic gold medalist Lomachenko has the boxing skills to out-box his opposition, but we’d like to see him put his chin on the line to score knockouts the way that middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin does.

That’s the big difference between GGG and Lomachenko in terms of entertainment purposes. Top Rank wants to build Lomachenko into a star. Thus far, Lomachenko failed in his toughest fight of his career against Orlando Salido by holding him all night for 12 rounds. If Lomachenko had gone to war, he would have helped his popularity and he might have won the fight. Instead, Lomachenko fought timidly, clinching Salido excessively for 12 rounds in losing a 12-round split decision.

Marriaga, 30, is coming off of a 12 round unanimous decision to the Top Rank promoted WBO featherweight champion Oscar Valdez earlier this year on April 22. The scoring for that fight seemed to be way off track from the actual fight. Valdez won the fight by the scores 119-108, 118-108 and 116-111. Boxing News 24 scored the fight 7 rounds to 5 in favor of Valdez.

Marriaga hurt Valdez on a couple of occasions late in the fight and exposed him for having stamina problems. It was one of the most exciting fights of the year. Marriaga also lost to the Top Rank promoted Nicholas Walters by a 12 round unanimous decision in June 2015. That was a clearer defeat for Marriaga. He wasn’t competitive with Walters the way he was with Valdez. That doesn’t mean that Valdez is a bad fighter. He’s a good fighter. He just wasn’t ready to go to war with Marriaga the way that Walters was. Marriaga has won 5 out of his last 7 fights.

Lomacheko wants to move up to lightweight in the near future. We could see that move as earlier as Lomachenko’s next fight. He’s 29-years-old now, and he’s going to need to move up if he wants to get bigger paydays. It doesn’t appear that Top Rank is interested in matching Lomachenko against fellow Top Rank fighter Oscar Valdez or with Rigondeaux.

The only other fight that is worth Lomachenko staying at super featherweight would be for him to fight a rematch with Orlando Salido, who is currently injured. I don’t know what a win for Lomachenko will prove at this point.

Salido is now 36-years-old, and he only recently won his first fight in 3 years in defeating journeyman Aristides Perez on May 27. Salido was hurt in the fight, and he looked old. Lomachenko beating Salido now isn’t the same now that he’s not the same fighter that he was back in 2014 when he beat Lomachenko. When Lomachenko is 36, it would be interesting to see how he does against the top super featherweight. My guess is Lomachenko wouldn’t do well at all.

It’s tough on Marriaga to have to come back from such a grueling fight with Valdez to fight Lomachenko just 4 months later. With a fight like the Valdez-Marriaga bout, it would be better if Marriaga had at least 6 months minimum to recover before getting back in the ring to fight Lomachenko. This kind of reminds me of how Top Ran k matched Lomachenko up with Roman “Rocky” Martinez last year in June after Martinez had fought back to back grueling fights against Orlando Salido. Martinez took terrible punishment in both Salido fights.

For Martinez to have to come back to fight Lomachenko off the back of those fights, it’s not surprising that he was easily stopped in the 5th round. Marriaga might have been better off taking some time off to rest before fighting Lomachenko. But I guess the money he’s getting for the fight with Lomachenko was too good for him not to agree to the fight. I don’t know what the fight will tell you though. If Lomachenko easily wins, it might not give a clear picture of how good he is due to Marriaga having been through such a hard fight with Valdez.

It’s too bad Top Rank didn’t match Lomachenko up with Rigondeaux instead of Marriaga. Rigondeaux initially offered to fight Lomachenko at 126 [featherweight]. When that offer wasn’t accepted, Rigondeaux then offered to fight Lomachenko in his own weight class at super featherweight at 130 pounds. Rigondeaux would move up 2 divisions from the 122-pound weight class at super bantamweight to face Lomachenko at super featherweight.

It doesn’t appear that Lomachenko and Top Rank are interested in fighting Rigondeaux for some reason. It’s not surprising though. The Cuban Rigondeaux is a fighter with 2 Olympic gold medals under his belt. He has amazing boxing skills. In the past, Rigondeaux beat one of Top Rank’s biggest stars in Nonito Donaire in 2013 in winning an easy 12 round decision on HBO that was seen nationwide in the U.S.

Donaire’s once promising boxing career has never been the same since the loss to Rigondeaux. With the way that Rigondeaux schooled Donaire, I’m not surprised that he’s not getting a chance to fight Lomachenko, because the risk would be too high for the Ukrainian fighter. Lomachenko is a good fighter, but he’s already been exposed by Salido. A second loss to Rigondeaux would be even worse at this point, because there wouldn’t be the opportunity to blame the defeat on Lomachenko being outweighed. It would be Rigondeaux that would be outweighed by the heavier Lomachenko.