Comments Thread For: Lomachenko Drops Pedraza Twice, Wins Decision To Unify Titles

[JakeTheBoxer]

I do think Mikey is better than Loma, and Mikey definitely is going for bigger challenges, then Loma is. But as much as I like Mikey and dislike Loma, Easter was nothing but a paper champ too.

What is this bigger challenge? Hopeless fight with a huge 147?

[P4Pdunny]

Expected result. Will watch it back later.

[Boxing Logic]

Very impressive performance vs Loma vs a healthy, undrained Pedraza who had both height and reach advantages. I got a lesson in how important height can be to nullify a reach advantage when I watched Stevenson vs Gvozdyk. Well, Pedraza had the reach and the height. And he has very good skills all around. People forget he was outboxing Tank Davis and winning the fight before he decided to go to war with Tank. Everyone called him an idiot for doing that at the time but now I see people commenting online that the real reason was that Pedraza was only offered the Tank fight on two weeks notice, so he had to lose the weight all at once, draining himself and ruining his stamina, which is why he didn't have the gas tank to outbox Tank for 12 rounds and win a decision, and why he tried to go for the mid-rounds KO instead.

I don't know if any of that is true or not, but if it is, it's interesting to know.

[MDPopescu]

Many of the people on this site don't know chit about boxing. Before the fight everyone was acting like Dogboe would destroy Navarette...But it was clear that most posters on here didn't even know a damn thing about the Mexican. Anyone who thought Loma was going to quickly run through Pedraza must be pretty lacking in their observational awareness too. Pedraza has shown that he is a technically proficient fighter and he spoke of his plan that he would use to foil Lomachenko, which seemed like a thoughtful strategy. His previous fight with Beltran showed him to be pretty tricky and tough.

It's not only about "styles make fights".....What people seem to be NOT mindful of is "with every fight, fighters are not the exact same fighter they were in their previous fights". Fighters make adjustments according to the style they are attempting to win against. The intelligent fighters will craft and implement those strategies differently according to their opponents styles/ weaknesses/ strengths/ etc. Pedraza has proven to be a crafty, intelligent fighter. I'm not surprised that he gave Loma some problems.

... Most of the time, Pedraza moved along with Loma's moves... it was interesting to watch...

[MrShakeAndBake]

Lomachenko once again shows hes by far the most overrated fighter in boxing. Theres nothing his fanbois like Atlas won't do to convince everyone his wins make him an atg & yet these same clowns sht all over other fighters far superior resumes & claim "lomas higher p4p because he only has x amount of fights" as if hes not 30 fckin yrs old already.

Ummm he is P4P King with a new strap and that **** is eating you alive - GOOD!!!!!!

[jinkazama555]

P4P #1

prepare your belts Mikey, you gonna have two ass whoopings in a row

[KennyPowers]

Lomachenko did more in the 11th than Fury throughout his last fight; however, Loma underperformed and Fury is a GOAT. Boxing...

[Boxing Logic]

You've got to be joking,easter was undefeated & is huge for 135 division at 5'11". But I don't fault Loma too much for this fight,he just still has a lot to prove in my eyes to becoming p4p best in the world,Imho hes still a ways off from that,but if he keeps stacking titles he will no longer be more hype than proven as he is now because lets face it pedraza will never be a true champion,he might get another paper title but hed lose it anyways.

Pedraza is big for 135 as well, and since when does height mean everything? Pedraza not just taller and longer than Loma, like Easter was Mikey, but Pedraza moves way better than Easter, has way better head movement than Easter, has better jabs and feints. He's more skilled in every way than Easter, Easter just hits harder, but vs a huge 135 like Mikey with a great chin, that was quite irrelevant. Mikey would have been in tougher vs someone with skills like Pedraza but less power than he was vs Easter. Because Easter had more power than Pedraza, but still not elite power. He couldnt even drop Javier Fortuna who was stopped by Sosa who was stopped by Loma. So I think we have it all skewed here. Loma and Mikey are at the very top level. Then, there is a drop off until we get to Tank. Then ACTUALLY, RIGHT below that, is Pedraza, because Pedraza fought Tank on 2 weeks notice apparently, and had to drain to 130 on 2 weeks notice, but was still beating Tank early before I guess Pedraza gassed, or was worried he would gas, or maybe just got ****** (but Im betting it was the weight) and tried to go to war with Tank, which got him stopped (even though he made the count). Otherwise, in terms of pure skills, length, height, speed, had Pedraza had a full camp, and been healthy at 135, that's a pick em fight with Tank.

So we have Loma and Mikey at the top, then a big drop off to Tank, then right below that a healthy Pedraza, and THEN Easter is either right below Pedraza, or on the same level. Easter vs Pedraza at 135 is a pick em fight. Javier Fortuna outboxed Easter all night and IMO won that fight using the same style Pedraza fought vs Loma, just Pedraza is longer and a more natural defensive fighter than Fortuna. And he can take a better shot than Fortuna.

So that's a more accurate way of looking at it. Ironically, Easter might have been tougher for Loma than Pedraza, because a good not great puncher at 135, like Easter, is enough to hurt the featherweight Loma, but not big Mikey, while Pedraza might have been a tougher opponent for Mikey than Easter, because while Easter's good not great power at 135 was zero bother to Mikey, Pedraza's movement and speed and boxing skills might have caused more problems for Mikey than they did for the slicker Loma.

See how styles really do make fights? Anyway, if the 2 weeks notice thing with Pedraza vs Tank is true, then it would really explain a lot of people's confusion about this whole Loma-Pedraza-Tank situation and how good Loma is in general. I always thought Tank exposed that he was a fake champion and a ducker when he said he was "forced" to fight Pedraza because I had never heard of Pedraza until I saw him fighting a really dumb fight vs this unknown Tank Davis guy. But since then we've seen Tank is actually pretty good, and now we're hearing Pedraza might have not been anywhere near his best vs Tank. Tonight, with a full camp, at his natural weight 135, we saw Pedraza is actually a pretty good, difficult opponent, and I finally understood what Tank meant, or why he thought that going in. Had Pedraza been healthy, 100%, and boxed smart vs Tank, he could have lowkey put a beating on Tank, one of those feather-fisted type of extended frustrating beatings you sometimes see in boxing like Danny Garcia vs Herrera (but Pedraza hits a little harder P4P even than Herrera, which was still enough to beat up Danny pretty good), and he could have beaten Tank pretty wide like 8-4 at least maybe 9-3.

We finally saw that promise fulfilled by Pedraza vs Lomachenko, fighting at his best, healthy, showing incredible stamina all night long to move, defend, bob and weave, and counter at the pace he did all night, and then throw almost 1000 punches in the fight on top of that according to compubox. Didn't the ESPN commentators say before that fight that 1. it was a mismatch and 2. Pedraza fades late? Because they were basically way off on both those things. Fades late? Pedraza showed the best stamina of anyone to fight Lomachenko except maybe Gary Russell Jr or something, in fact his way better than GRJ's. So that again makes you think that the Pedraza we saw at 130 was not the true, 100% Pedraza. A fighter with elite stamina at 135 is a whole different challenge than a fighter at 130 with bad stamina. Can you imagine if Canelo for example went from having below average stamina to having ELITE stamina? He would be nearly unbeatable. Well Pedraza will never have Canelo's power but it's still a totally different challenge to fight someone with elite stamina vs bad stamina. It changes up everything they can do.

So Loma fought that guy, the Pedraza some fans thought he could be early on, the Pedraza that Tank thought he could be, that Tank was scared of him being, that Tank was so scared of he had to be "forced" to fight him, only to find out that the guy he was scared of was not the guy that showed up to the ring that night, and yet Loma fought THAT guy and still did very well. Impressive performance, even if less SPECTACULAR than some others. We are lucky to get to watch such exciting athletes in our lifetimes.

[Boxing Logic]

Its all good,I genuinely do think loma is a top fighter but did you read that bs article from the dm I posted? Absolutely laughable,but those types of articles have been written since loma was 7-1 ffs,& I think all the hype is actually hurting loma because he now will have his every move scrutinized due to hype being generated alone

What article?

[Boxing Logic]

I rank Loma as the best in his division atm but I have been dying to see him face a name any name even an old fighter like pac,or if mikey loses v Spence theres no better fight in boxing imho than loma v mikey,I will be happy if he faces Berchelt,or even rematches linares

Loma already fought a name. Rigo has one of the best names in boxing. One of the most avoided names. When you say Pac and Mikey, it sounds like what you really want is for him to fight a name who is also a way bigger boxer than he is. I mean, Linares and Pedraza were already much bigger, but he's still beating them so now we have to look at even bigger ones? Because if you care about him beating top guys his actual size, in fair fights, then Loma already proved that to you multiple times vs Gary Russell Jr (who is so good he beat JoJo Diaz Jr a top young fighter who is much bigger than GRJ!), Nicolas Walters, and the much bigger Linares. Linares, Rigo, GRJ, and Pedraza all have elite hand speed too, so Loma is not afraid to fight fast guys all the time. Contrast that to for example Floyd who would almost always cherry pick slower Mexican style opponents, heck same with Ward for that matter (Froch, Abraham, Kessler, Barrera, Brand, even past prime Kovalev, none of these are dynamic, explosive athletes, all of them are slower, orthodox, 'basic' or as Floyd would call them, no special effects type of fighters). Loma on the other hand is fighting all styles out there. GRJ, Linares, Rigo, Pedraza, these guys are ALL special effects. Handspeed, angles, footwork, each of these guys brings a lot of those elements if not the whole thing.

So, that should be respected. Promoters of other A-sides will figure out which style their guy looks best against, and then they will match him repeatedly vs only that style in order to make their guy look good and market him to casual fans better. Loma is one of the few whose hype is actually real to such an extent that the promoters or matchmakers dont even have to worry about what style they put him in with, because he can adjust to anything, even elite speed coming back at him, which is the single most difficult thing to deal with in a boxing ring, speed that is. Loma is the ONLY one in the entire sport CHOOSING to fight guys with elite hand speed REPEATEDLY. And when he's not doing that, he's fighting 11 lbs bigger southpaw destroyers like Salido in his 2nd pro fight, or KO punchers like Walters or even Sosa coming off the Fortuna TKO (and only because none of the champions would fight Loma), or Loma is calling out the much bigger #1 counterPUNCHER in the sport Mikey, or ANOTHER opponent with speed AND power AND size in Miguel Berchelt just like Linares.

No one else in the sport is doing that. If Loma was an American welterweight doing this, he would be the biggest thing since Sugar Ray Robinson. But because he's a Ukrainian featherweight who was basically forced to move up to 135 to get interesting opportunities for his legacy, he's not in as good a position as he would be. But if you know the context behind what you're looking at, then it's very impressive.