Vasyl Lomachenko returns in top form in a Lightweight bout against Masayoshi Nakatani
It has been a long 8 months since we watched one of boxing's most popular stars in Vasiliy Lomachenko enter the squared circle.
The last time we saw him was last October where he took on the rising star and IBF lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez to attempt to unify that title belt with Loma’s own WBA and WBO lightweight world titles. It was also fight that almost didn't happen due to contract negotiations.
Luckily the fight did take place and was an amazing bout although In that highly anticipated fight Loma came up short and the huge underdog of Teofimo won the fight by unanimous decision.
It was not long after the fight that there were reports that Lomachenkos team had said Loma suffered an injury on the same shoulder that he previously had surgery on weeks before the bout was set to take place against Teofimo.
Even after his team tried to convince Loma to reschedule the fight he insisted that he take the fight and get surgery after which resulted in a fight where we saw Loma not look like his usual self until later in the 7th round and on which was way too late in the contest.
After the fight, Loma then had gotten surgery on the injured shoulder and has sat on the sidelines recovering.
That is until this past Saturday, June 26th, 2021 where we saw Lomachenko make his much-anticipated return to the ring. In this return fight, we saw him take on fellow Lightweight contender Masayoshi Nakatani. Although there were no titles on the line here Nakatani held the WBO intercontinental lightweight title which was previously vacant before Nakatani won it in an exciting fight against Felix Verdejo.
One thing both Loma and Nakatani had in common was that both fighters had suffered a loss to Teofimo and Loma even made that a key reason for wanting this fight against Nakatani as the fight between Nakatani and Lopez was closer than many thought and Loma wanted to see how he did against someone to put up a competitive fight against Lopez. Coming into this fight Nakatani was 19-1 with the only loss coming at the hands of Lopez.
Fast forward to last Saturday and both fighters made their way to the ring and the fight gets underway after the introductions.
Right away you can see the clear size difference between the two and the 4-inch height difference stood out like a sore thumb and in the first round was the typical Lomachenko style beginning of a fight where he would take in data of his opponent while landing 6 out of 15 thrown punches making Nakatani land just 2 out of his 19 punches thrown.
The second round was more of the same but even more so as Loma was still sticking to the gameplan of in and out movement with his usual crafty footwork and landed 7 out of 20 of his punches but had Nakatani looking levels below who landed just 1 out of his 22 punches thrown.
In the next 3 rounds, we saw just about the same thing where Loma was being the matador to the tall bull in Nakatani making him miss over and over while Loma landed counter after counter and check hook after check hook.
Although it was in the 5th round where we saw a super tough Nakatani finally go down to a combination of punches. He did manage to get up rather quickly and beat the count to continue the fight.
But going forward from that moment things did not get any better for Nakatani as he was just getting battered all while swinging at the air for the majority of the next couple rounds.
It was around round 5 & 6 where Loma started really ripping his shots to the body and you could visibly see Nakatani wear those shots and his high guard started getting lower and lower with each body shot and when Loma saw that he attacked upstairs and really swelled up Nakatani’s right eye.
Going into the 9th round it was all but over as we saw the fight almost get stopped at the end of the 8th round but Nakatani was saved by the bell. But in the 9th round was where we saw Loma enter the matrix and completely unleash his punches on Nakatani landing 19 of his 29 punches thrown popping Nakatani over and over in the face and body until we saw Nakatani's knees start to give from under him and the ref jumped in to stop the fight just as Nakatani was about to go down and even did so right after the ref jumped in to stop it.
After yet another world-class showing by Loma, it was very clear that he was back to his usual self after that surgery. Not to discredit Lopez at all for his win against Loma but I, along with every real boxing fan would love to see this rematch.
Loma won this match with a 9th round TKO and now waits in the wings as Teofimo Lopez is scheduled to fight George Kambosos on August 14th after the fight had to be rescheduled due to Lopez getting covid recently.
Regardless, we all now wait for the outcome of that fight to see what happens after.
Teofimos' father and the head trainer had said after the Loma fight that he would love to get a rematch done with Loma and his son but it would have to be right after the Kambosos fight and im pretty sure Loma would have no problem obliging to that.
Hope you all enjoyed the read!
-Sani
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