Jason Sosa: Watch It Again; You’ll See I Beat Nicholas Walters

By Keith Idec

LAS VEGAS – Jason Sosa thinks the lone blemish on Nicholas Walters’ record should be a loss, not a draw.

Sosa believes he beat Walters in their 10-round, 130-pound fight December 19 in Verona, New York. Jamaica’s Walters (26-0-1, 21 KOs), who’ll challenge Vasyl Lomachenko (6-1, 4 KOs) tonight at The Cosmopolitan (HBO; 10:35 p.m. ET), said earlier this week that he walked away from the Sosa fight certain that he won it.

“Coming out of the Nicholas Walters fight, I felt like I won, even if people saw it as a draw or people saw it in Nicholas’ favor,” Sosa told BoxingScene.com. “But if you actually saw the fight again, and turned off the commentators, we won the fight. We won the fight, but that’s the past.

“We moved into the present now. We didn’t lose nothing from that fight. We got in there with a world champion and one of the feared guys at that time. And now he’s fighting Lomachenko, so let’s see.”

None of the three judges scored the Sosa-Walters fight for Sosa.

Judges Don Ackerman and Wynn Kintz scored the 10-round bout even (95-95). Tom Schreck scored the fight, which was broadcast by HBO, by the score of 96-94 for Walters.

The 28-year-old Sosa (20-1-4, 15 KOs), of Camden, New Jersey, won a world title in his next bout, six months after his draw with Walters.

Sosa survived a fifth-round knockdown during that fight to stop favored Dominican Javier Fortuna (31-1-1, 22 KOs) in the 11th round of their June 24 fight in Beijing. Sosa made his first defense of the WBA world super featherweigh championship he won from Fortuna on November 12, when he floored England’s Stephen Smith (24-3, 14 KOs) in the second round on his way to winning a unanimous decision in Monte Carlo.

The 30-year-old Walters hasn’t fought in the 11 months since he faced Sosa. His promoter, Bob Arum, attempted several times thereafter to match Walters against Ukraine’s Lomachenko, a uniquely skilled southpaw who’ll make the first defense of the WBO world super featherweight title he won from Puerto Rico’s Rocky Martinez five months ago in The Theater at Madison Square Garden.

HBO will televise the Lomachenko-Walters fight as the main event of a “World Championship Boxing” broadcast from The Chelsea inside The Cosmopolitan.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.