By Rick Reeno
Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas - Manager Egis Klimas says his fighter, WBO featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko (4-1, 2KOs), is ready to face any of the other beltholders at 126-pounds.
Lomachenko, a two-time Olympic gold medal winner, is going to return in the fall. One possibility is to have him defend his title as part of Top Rank's planned event in Dubai - which has a tentative date of November 21st.
One boxer in particular on Lomachenko's radar is IBF champion Lee Selby (21-1, 8KOs).
On May 30th in London, Selby captured the title with an eight round technical decision over Lomachenko's Top Rank stablemate, Evgeny Gradovich.
Klimas is also the manager of Gradovich. After Selby was announced as the winner of the May encounter, Klimas claims the Welsh fighter turned to him and demanded a unification with Lomachenko.
"If he means it, we would like to fight him. If not, then what can I do," Klimas told BoxingScene.com.
Klimas wants to satisfy that demand - but he wants a neutral environment for that fight.
Klimas was very unhappy with the sour ending to Gradovich's fight with Selby. The fight was stopped early on what appeared to be a minor cut.
According to Gradovich, who spoke to BoxingScene.com on Friday, the ringside doctor was telling him 'I'm going to stop the fight' before the Russian boxer was even afforded the opportunity to answer any questions related to his vision being potentially impaired by the cut.
What happened in the following match of that show, between Jorge Linares and Kevin Mitchell, was where Klimas (and Gradovich) were furious.
Mitchell was taking a lot of punishment in the second half of the contest and he was badly cut around the left eye. The eye was also grotesquely swollen, but the contest was allowed to continue for several rounds until Linares dropped him hard in the tenth round.
Gradovich strongly believes, as does his team, that his contest was stopped short because Selby was perceived to be ahead on the scorecards - while Mitchell (also from the UK) was allowed to fight on because many at ringside felt he was leading on the cards, and he was - 88-82, 86-84, 85-85 at the time of the TKO.
Taking everything into consideration, Klimas is not in favor of staging Lomachenko-Selby in the UK.
"We can have the fight in a neutral [location]. We can fight in Canada. We can fight in Dubai where Bob Arum is putting [on a show]. We can fight in Macau. It doesn't have to be in [the UK], it can be neutral," Klimas told BoxingScene.com.