by David P. Greisman
Sergey Lipinets left the Galen Center in Los Angeles on Saturday night with two things in particular — a big victory over Lenny Zappavigna that put him in position to challenge for a world title at junior welterweight, and a bloody gash on his hairline from where he and Zappavigna clashed heads.
The victory brought the prospect’s record to 11-0 with 9 KOs and cemented his place in the International Boxing Federation’s rankings.
“He is going to take a little break for the holidays and be back in the gym to stay ready,” said Lipinets’ manager, Alex Vaysfeld. “Sergey became a mandatory for Julius Indongo, who just won that title, but [adviser] Al Haymon will tell us what to do next.”
Zappavigna, a former 135-pound title challenger, was riding a 10-fight win streak. He gave Lipinets a good battle, and then the tide truly turned after Lipinets scored a knockdown in the fifth. The end came on another knockdown in the eighth.
“Overall Sergey was sticking with our game plan. He did make a couple of mistakes that were corrected by his corner,” Vaysfeld said. “He was raising up after combinations, and that's were he got caught a couple of times, but nothing major.”
The bout was a prelim to the Showtime broadcast, but it was streamed live on the network’s Facebook page. The video of the two-bout online show had been viewed about 395,000 times as of early Monday morning.
“It was a great crowd-pleasing fight against a very tough opponent,” Vaysfeld said. “Hopefully the boxing world will recognized Sergey as one of the top rising stars in the business.”
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