By Ron Lewis

Luke Campbell could be in a position to box for a world title again by next summer according to Eddie Hearn, who expects most top lightweights to start positioning themselves in expectation of Vasiliy Lomachenko vacating four world title belts at some point next year.

Campbell earned plenty of credit despite losing a unanimous decision to Lomachenko in London on Saturday, a win which earned the Ukrainian the vacant WBC lightweight title to go along with the WBA and WBO titles he already held.

Lomachenko is expected to face the winner of the planned December 14 Richard Commey-Teofimo Lopez IBF title fight in March or April next year, but Hearn is not expecting to hold onto his titles for long after that.

“He’ll have four mandatories,” Hearn said. “And then he will move down super-feather or feather and get rid of these belts and that’s when you’ve got to be in position to fight for a vacant belt. I don’t want Luke Campbell to fight Lomachenko again so we’ve got to see if we can get in position to challenge for a vacant belt.

“We’ve got two guys with Devin Haney fighting in two weeks’ time (against Zaur Abdullaev) for a WBC final eliminator. So he will be mandatory if he wins that. But now you’ve got to get everybody in position to win the belts when they become free.

“But I do see Luke moving to 140 as well. He’s a big, big lightweight - he didn't struggle at the weight but he did say it was quite hard this time. But he looked good - he looked well in his face and lasted the fight well.”

Hearn was full of praise for Campbell and believes his stock will have risen, despite losing.

“I thought he was brilliant,” Hearn said. “But it’s so hard isn’t it? There were a couple of times in the fight when I thought Lomachenko looked tired but when you press the action, it’s almost more dangerous than when you don’t.

“Shane McGuigan (Campbell’s trainer) was saying in the 12th ‘you need to knock him out, go for it’ – but it’s easier said than done isn’t it? But I thought against any other world champion Luke Campbell probably becomes world champion. He has had to fight Linares in California with his Dad passing away 10 days before and now he’s had to fight Lomachenko for the belts.

“But sometimes in defeat, your stock rises considerably. And that’s happened. He’s like a hero and the crowds love the fact that you're crippled to the body, you’re on one knee, and you don't want to go down and when you do you get up. He didn't need to do that, really.

“At times in the fight, he could have been excused for saying ‘that’s enough, because I’m not winning this fight’. But he always kept trying. Even the last round he was always trying to win the fight.”

Hearn believes Lomachenko would sell out any arena in the UK, even without a British opponent, but says it is unlikely it would happen because it would mean a lower television rights fee.

“ESPN wouldn't pay the same TV money that they would in the States for Lomachenko to box here,” Hearn said. “Oleksandr Uskyk as well. We could go to Chicago and we’ll sell 5,000 or 6000 tickets. I could put him on here [at the 02] against Carlos Takam and sell out, so it’s a bit of a weird one really.

“The British fans are educated and they are knowledgeable and that’s why so many of them come. They come from five o’clock tonight to the whole thing. It was three quarters full from 7pm because they want to see all the fights.”