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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 2594093, member: 289"] Vasiliy Lomachenko, rated the top pound for pound fighter in the world, (although i prefer Terrance "Bud" Crawford), knocked out the taller, supposedly stronger lightweight champion, Jorge Linares in the 10th round tonight to get his third title. Lomachecnko is a short but solidly built and incredibly quick fighter, a perpetual motion machine that throws lightening combinations with tremendous accuracy. Linares is already a three division champion with a great jab and considerable hand speed and accuracy of his own. Lomachecnko's last three opponents had quit on their stools, giving him the name "No mas" Lomachencko, not because he's likely to quit, (he's like the energizer bunny), but because his opponents keep quitting. i'd seen Lomachecnko fight several times but never Linares and I was impressed with both. This fight was fought on the highest combined level I've seen in years, with both fighters throwing incredible combinations and landing many punches. neither seemed able to really hurt the other, not because their punches lacked power but because they were both too strong to be knocked down or even backwards. There were times when Linares looked like the could not keep up with Lomo's pace and a cut appeared over one of his eyes. but just when you thoguth he was fading, he'd start throwing combinations again and get back into the fight. When he kept going with his jab, he kept Lomo at a distance and would use his 3 inch reach advantage. i got irritated with the announcers, who kept praising Lomo for everything he did and telling his life story, etc., and yet this was obviously a very competitive fight. they ahd to change their tune when Lianes caught Lomo coming in and nailed him with a short shot right on the nose, knocking him down for the first time, they said, since he was an amateur in 2007. it happened near the end of the 6th round and Linares wasn't able to follow up immediately but it changed the momentum of the fight. I gave Linares the 7th and 9th rounds to give him an 86-85 lead on my so-unofficial-you-can't-believe-it card. Then in the 10th round, Lomo got his combos going again and suddenly the bigger man sagged to the canvas, bent over onto his legs. he struggled to get up but was barely able to stand and the referee waived the fight over, to no protest at all. the replay showed what had happened: Virtually all the punches in this fight had been aimed at the head. But Lomo went under and up with a classic solar plexus punch. commentator Timothy Bradley, who had had that experience before, said that when you get hit there, one side of your body goes numb. Linares may have wanted to go on but his body couldn't even hold him up any more. I brought to mind the most famous solar plexus punch in boxing history: [MEDIA=youtube]BOFdL5VkcQM[/MEDIA] The end of that fight is exactly what the end of this fight looked like, although the commentators called it a "liver" shot. Both fighters did themselves proud and should get some more big fights coming out of this. Lomo proved he could beat a bigger man. he might even be able to mix it up with the several impressive welterweights we we've got now, (including Crawford, the 140 pound champ). remember Henry Armstrong once owned the Feather, Light and Welter titles AT THE SAME TIME - and then fought he middleweight champion to a draw. Lomo, with his high energy pace, is a bit like Armstrong, who was called the "perpetual motion machine in his time. Linares proved he could trade shots with Lomo and not always come out second best as everybody else had done. He could be a formidable opponent for some of those welters or even for Lomo again in the future. [URL="http://www.espn.com/boxing/story/_/id/23485907/vasiliy-lomachenko-lomachenko-stops-jorge-linares-tko-10th-round"]Lomachenko stops Linares with 10th-round TKO[/URL] After watching Andre Ward destroy Sergey Kovalev with body shots and this, you wonder why so many boxers go for the smaller target of the head. [/QUOTE]

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