By Miguel Rivera
WBA lightweight champion Jorge Linares (44-3, 27 KOs) has aggressively ruled out the idea of joining the list of boxers who "quit" while fighting two-time Olympic gold medal winner Vasyl Lomachenko (10-1, 8 KOs).
The contest takes place on May 12 at Madison Square Garden in New York. ESPN will televised the fight.
Lomachenko is going for his third world title. He won a world title at the featherweight limit of 126-pounds and the super featherweight limit of 130.
Lomachenko has been building a big reputation for beating down his opponents until they mentally break - and eventually quit.
Lomachenko's last four opponents have raised up a white flag.
Nicholas Walters gave up his undefeated record after seven rounds of action, at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. And then Jason Sosa had enough after nine rounds of action at the MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill. Miguel Marriaga took a bad beating and was done after seven rounds. And then last December, in a very anticipated fight, another two-tom Olympic gold medal winner, Guillermo Rigondeaux, walked away after six rounds - claiming a hand injury that few people believed.
While Lomachenko has built up a reputation for making fighters quit, Linares has built up a reputation for going out on his shield and fighting hard through adversity during tough moments in some of his ring outings. In some of his recent fights with Anthony Crolla and Luke Campbell, Linares showed his durability by fighting off some late rallies from the British challengers.
"I will never do that, I will never give up, which is what people always talk about and heap praise on Lomachenko, because all of his opponents abandon [the fight]," said Linares to ESPN's A Los Golpes. "I'm not a boxer who abandons [a fight], I'm a boxer who [goes out on his shield] ... you know what."