By Lyle Fitzsimmons

It was the sort of performance that challenges vocabularies and changes perceptions.

Because it's not enough to simply say Vasyl Lomachenko beat Nicholas Walters.

And it's not enough to say he forced a heretofore sturdy Jamaican — previously unconquered in 27 professional outings — to think better of rising from his stool to reconvene hostilities in Round 8.

Those are, in fact, things he did.

But they don’t speak to the totality of last November’s goings-on at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas.

Instead, given Lomachenko's comprehensive dominance for every second of 21 combative minutes, it’s far more accurate to suggest he surged his star power to the highest luminosity.

At least among the hardcore set, anyway.

Given the fight’s placement in the midst of a significant football week, it was probably only the diehards still up past midnight on the East Coast to see a Ukrainian fight a Jamaican in a weight class outgrown by most 16-year-old American boys.

Bleary-eyed or not, though, it was their loss.

Because what the pedestrian fan missed was an effort so strategically superior and intellectually violent that it forced the HBO announce team to retreat across generations to locate a similarly gifted architect.

Toward that end, Harold Lederman — the network’s septuagenarian ringside scorer — went all the way back to a fighter who’d last laced them up just two months after he, Lederman, turned 26.

Incidentally, he turned 77 in January.

"He is really special," Lederman said. "The movement. The hand speed. If there were more old guys like me around, you’d compare him to Willie Pep."

Pep, for the uninitiated, won 226 fights in a career that touched three decades and was part of the International Boxing Hall of Fame’s inaugural induction class — alongside more instantly recognizable surnames like Ali, Robinson and Marciano — in 1990.

“Willie Pep was special,” Lederman continued. "The only difference is that he was right-handed."

Given that the Walters fight was just the eighth of his pro career, it’ll be a long while before Lomachenko matches the 25 matches that Pep had after his own 35th birthday, let alone the 216 that preceded it.

But he’s already good enough to create the buzz.

And if Top Rank boss Bob Arum — who celebrated promotion No. 2,000 that night — is able to engineer the events suggested in its one-sided aftermath, the waiting may not wind up being the hardest part.

Among them, get-togethers with promotional stablemates Terence Crawford and Manny Pacquiao.

Intriguingly, HBO's Max Kellerman said Crawford and Lomachenko called each other’s names in meetings when asked to identify modern contemporaries so vastly superior to the flotsam and jetsam.

Colleague Roy Jones Jr. poured cold water by pointing out Crawford’s superior size — he’s 5-foot-8 with a 70-inch reach, compared to Lomachenko’s 5-foot-6 and 65½ inches — but didn’t add that Walters, who arrived with 21 KOs in 26 wins, was just a shade shorter than Crawford (5-foot-7) with a significantly longer wingspan at 73 inches.

As for Pacquiao, though, the dimensions and career arcs do make more sense.

While Crawford has already leaped from 135 pounds to 140 and seems destined to evolve into a welterweight, those around the aging Filipino star have long suggested he’d be more comfortable — and perhaps more devastating — with a move down to 140, a division he invaded with a two-round erasure of Ricky Hatton in 2009 before chasing bigger names and purses at 147 and beyond.

Lomachenko would stand a half-inch taller in a press conference staring contest while conceding the same narrow difference in reach, and a successful match with a certified pay-per-view stalwart would go a lot further toward putting the Ukrainian over with fans — and tilling the ground for even bigger shows — than unification at 130 with fighters few outside their families would recognize.

It's the "eventually, he'll get Pacquiao" path Arum used to suggest for Brandon Rios before age, weight and brawls took their toll on “Bam Bam” and made the eventual duel more sparring than scintillating.

Lomachenko seems in no danger of such precipitous fizzling.

"There’s no doubt who’s going to rise to be the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world," Kellerman said. “And it leaves us scratching our heads about who could fight him on this level."

Indeed, headliner shows warrant far better than bar-band encores.

And given the 29-year-old’s obvious comfort on the big stage – with all due respect to imminent foe Jason Sosa -- there seems no reason not to start the world tour right away.

* * * * * * * * * *

This week’s title-fight schedule:

FRIDAY
Vacant IBO featherweight title -- Las Vegas, Nevada
Claudio Marrero (No. 12 IBO/No. 23 IWBR) vs. Carlos Zambrano (Unranked IBO/Unranked IWBR)
Marrero (21-1, 15 KO): First title fight; Second fight in Las Vegas (1-0, 1 KO)
Zambrano (26-0, 11 KO): First title fight; Tenth fight outside of Peru (9-0, 3 KO)
Fitzbitz says: Zambrano has a gaudy record and used to hold a cheesy sanctioning body title, but he’s been off more than a year and is in tough when it comes to return bouts. Marrero in 9

SATURDAY
IBF mini flyweight title – Site TBA, Mexico
Jose Argumedo (champion/No. 4 IWBR) vs. Gabriel Mendoza (Unranked IBF/Unranked IWBR)
Argumedo (19-3-1, 11 KO): Third title defense; Seventh scheduled 12-round fight (6-0, 3 KO)
Mendoza (28-4-2, 23 KO): First title fight; Never won a fight outside of Colombia (0-2, 0 KO)
Fitzbitz says: Argumedo has succeeded over the distance against a higher grade of foe. Add the fact that Mendoza’s never won on non-home turf and this one becomes an easy mark. Argumedo in 7

WBO lightweight title -- Manchester, United Kingdom
Terry Flanagan (champion/No. 6 IWBR) vs. Petr Petrov (No. 2 WBO/No. 5 IWBR)
Flanagan (32-0, 13 KO): Fifth title defense; Eighth scheduled 12-round fight (7-0, 4 KO)
Petrov (38-4-2, 19 KO): Second title fight (0-1); All four career losses in Europe
Fitzbitz says: Flanagan isn’t quite as rugged as Petrov, but he’s more skilled and he’s in his backyard – which should help a bit if things get particularly close. Flanagan by decision

WBO junior lightweight title -- Oxon Hill, Maryland
Vasyl Lomachenko (champion/No. 1 IWBR) vs. Jason Sosa (No. 2 WBO/No. 9 IWBR)
Lomachenko (7-1, 5 KO): Second title fight; Four consecutive wins by KO/TKO (31 total rounds)
Sosa (20-1-4, 15 KO): Third title fight (2-0); Never won a 12-round fight in the United States
Fitzbitz says: Plainly and simply, Lomachenko is the best fighter in the world. And though he’s no novice, Sosa isn’t really in his class. The champ will win and look good doing it. Lomachenko in 7

WBO cruiserweight title – Oxon Hill, Maryland
Oleksandr Usyk (champion/No. 1 IBWR) vs. Michael Hunter (No. 9 WBO/No. 26 IWBR)
Usyk (11-0, 10 KO): Second title defense; Second fight in the United States (1-0, 1 KO)
Hunter (12-0, 8 KO): First title fight; Third fight scheduled for more than eight rounds (2-0, 1 KO)
Fitzbitz says: Hunter certainly didn’t pick a stiff for his first 12-round fight. One thing seems sure, though, the American probably won’t be around to hear the final bell anyway. Usyk in 8

Last week's picks: 1-1 (WIN: Buthelezi; LOSS: Huck)
2017 picks record: 18-8 (69.2 percent)
Overall picks record: 840-282 (74.8 percent)

NOTE: Fights previewed are only those involving a sanctioning body's full-fledged title-holder – no interim, diamond, silver, etc. Fights for WBA "world championships" are only included if no "super champion" exists in the weight class.

Lyle Fitzsimmons has covered professional boxing since 1995 and written a weekly column for Boxing Scene since 2008. He is a full voting member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Reach him at fitzbitz@msn.com or follow him on Twitter – @fitzbitz.