My Take on Rigo-Loma

We can all speculate on what's going to happen and stereotype Rigo like he's going to run all night. Until the fight happens we really don't know how Rigo will fight. I will explain why. Rigo seems like the "adaptive" type of fighter; like Andre Ward, and Floyd Mayweather. They are the type of fighters that will do what he has to in order to just win. You never know what type of fighter they will be on fight night, what kind of tools they will use, or what tactics they will implement in order to win. If you study boxing and pay close attention, all of these great fighters who go undefeated for very long periods of time like the fighters I just mentioned have this "mystique" to them. You just never really know what they will do, what to expect, and they always surprise you. (Mayweather was just so much better than a lot of the guys he fought, you felt like you were seeing the same Mayweather all the time because he would cruise, but when necessary you saw the other sides to him that he rarely showed.) Now the same thing can be said about Lomachenko, but I feel he is a different case then the guys I just mentioned. He is very diverse like them, but he is more of a special case because he is more methodical and it's like you know what's coming but he is just so good there is absolutely nothing you can do about it to stop him. It reminds me of Pacquiao. Pacquiao was more unorthodox with ridiculous speed, but you get the point. You know what you're going to get. Now honestly Lomachenko is more skilled/special then Pacquiao, he's got more tools in his arsenal and he can mix it up and switch it up on you whenever and do it all extremely well. He's a straight up dominant force. It takes a "special" type of fighter with extremely high boxing IQ - that fast, quick, and adaptive style in order to beat him. This is exactly the type of fighter Rigondeaux is. Fighters that are like Rigo, Floyd, and Ward their goal when fighting you is to literally disrupt YOUR rhythm, and throw you off your game in order to neutralize you. That's why when you see them fight, they are only as good as their opposition it seems like. The better the guy in front of him, the better they fight and the better they look. They never really look "spectacular" to the naked eye. You have to truly understand what they do in order to see just how beautiful what they do is. It's like they win in a subliminal way. When you listen to their opponents after they fight...they can't really clearly explain how or why they lost. Something they all have in common is that they all somehow feel like "He didn't really do anything..." Another thing Rigo, Ward, and Floyd Mayweather have in common is that it doesn't seem to matter if their opponents are physically larger than them. Ward always fought bigger guys, and so did Mayweather. If you pay attention, Rigo always fought bigger guys too. The reason I'm bringing this up is because everyone is making a big deal about the weight and how much it will be a factor. I'm pretty sure that if Rigo believed himself that it will be a big factor, he wouldn't have taken this fight and be so confident in his ability to beat a larger guy. Just by hearing him talk you can just tell what kind of mentality he has. In fact, listen to all 3 of them talk when the subject of weight comes up in any of their interviews, you will see they all have something in common here as well. Now I talked a lot about Rigo here because he is the underdog and I feel like he has this thing about him a lot of people are missing so I probably seem a bit biased but I was just pointing a few things out some might not be taking into consideration. Now to talk more about Lomachenko, he is such a special talent and dominant fighter his fighting just speaks for itself really. Everyone can see the skills he has, everyone can see what he is able to do and all of his abilities. They are very visible to the naked eye. This is why he is #1 p4p for a lot of people even though he has not fought the competition to warrant it. You can clearly see how special he is. You don't really NEED him to fight top opposition to see how amazing of a fighter he is. Now in terms if matching him against Rigo, I feel like (this is just my opinion) Loma should be more worried about what Rigo will bring on fight night then vise versa. It's like you don't really know. We ALL know what Loma will bring, but who has that real "X" factor? As the smaller man, Rigo will be faster for sure, even if they were the same size it would be the case. He's small and very elusive. To keep it all the way real Loma has pretty average speed. Rigo will try to set him up for counters and when it comes to range-finding they are pretty evenly matched in this department. Will Rigo be able to make Loma pay for his attacks? If so, How much will they affect Loma? How will Loma react? Can Rigo limit Loma's punch output? Can Loma win with an opponent that limits what he can do? We all see Loma go in there and fight and do whatever he wants to with everyone. How will he respond with someone in front of him he clearly can't do this to? Most of the questions I personally have in this fight are toward Lomachenko and how HE will handle Rigo. It is for this reason I am picking Rigo for the upset, BUT I really wouldn't be surprised if Rigo gets knocked out at all. A part of me can just see it happening. If he gets clipped he may not survive. We've seen him get clipped before, I think mostly due to his carelessness about feeling the guy in front of him is not on his level. He will probably be more defensively responsible this time around because he knows he has to be, but Loma is good to the point that if he puts Rigo down he will probably stop him.