The imperious Vasiliy Lomachenko captured the World Boxing Association lightweight title from Jorge Linares in a wildly entertaining scrap on a rainy Saturday night in New York, becoming a world champion in a third weight division in the remarkable and unprecedented span of a dozen professional fights. Lomachenko needed only two rounds to make the right adjustments and began using feints to move Linares out of position, making him pay with shots from unexpected angles. “I relaxed a little bit,” Lomachenko said afterward through a translator of the first knockdown of his career. “Going into this fight, we knew Loma was a huge talent,” said Bob Arum, who promotes Lomachenko. That includes the split-decision defeat in his second fight to Mexico’s Orlando Salido, a multiple-time world champion across two divisions and one of the sport’s all-time gamers.

Source: The Irish Times May 13, 2018 09:11 UTC