As expected, Vasyl Lomachenko, many people’s top pound for pound fighter, had a relatively easy time rolling to a win over Miguel Marriaga. He got it when Marriaga’s corner pulled him out after the seventh round. It wasn’t my favorite Loma performance, but he dominated with ease as always. Ray Beltran also won a narrow decision on the undercard.
Vasyl Lomachenko (9-1, 7 KOs) clearly had no respect for Miguel Marriaga (25-3, 21 KOs) as an opponent. While he usually uses the best footwork in the sport to create impossible angles for his opponent, here Lomachenko largely used those same feet to stay right in front of Marriaga for every second of the fight. Intentionally leaving himself in the danger zone with complete confidence that Marriaga would not be able to touch him anyway, the two time Olympic gold medalist fought this fight entirely as a pressure fighter.
Marriaga didn’t deal with the pressure all that well either. While he did throw back here and there all the way to the end, he fought most of the fight going backwards with his guard up. Lomachenko just didn’t let him move his hands as he had to use them to defend himself in every moment of the fight. Twice Lomachenko really got through upstairs, dropping Miguel in the third and the seventh, but most of his best work was done to the body. The Ukrainian champion turned up the volume in the sixth, putting a real two round beating on and leading to Marriaga’s corner mercifully pulling him out of the fight following the seventh round.
One other thing that must be mentioned in covering this fight is the constant showboating of Vasyl Lomachenko. He really is now a professional mentally. Clearly, he is trying to put on a show. There were moments where he was in the pocket with his hands intentionally down to bait Marriaga. In the third round following the first knockdown, Vasyl backed himself into the corner and begged Marriaga to come attack him. He also would intentionally just touch Marriaga in the head with little, intentionally harmless pats at time, just to serve as a reminder that he could touch him whenever he wants. On some level, this is really disrespectful stuff, but it also should help catch the attention of the more casual audience that is available to be captured on ESPN.
In the co-main event, lightweight contender Ray Beltran (34-7-1, 21 KOs) escaped with a surprisingly narrow majority decision win over Bryan Vasquez (35-3, 19 KOs) with one card coming back a draw and the other two six rounds to four. This is also despite a noticeable significant size advantage in the ring for Beltran as he looked a full weight class larger. Vasquez was fairly slick in there, however, at times able to both neutralize and take advantage of Beltran’s overall fairly simple, come forward game.
I did think Beltran deserved the win, scoring the fight 97-93 in his favor. I definitely concede that there were close rounds though, some of which I scored for Beltran. I do not strongly object to the cards that were turned in.
Unfortunately, what I do strongly object to here is ESPN. First, the coverage itself is very poor. Stephen A Smith continues to make a fool of himself. Little more needs to be said there, except again to stress what damage he is doing to these broadcasts. He is actively chasing away potential viewers. Teddy Atlas also continues to ramble on in a frustrating way, but at least he understands the sport.
The major issue here, however, is how ESPN ran this card off its time slot without as much as alerting the viewers. The NFL Hall of Fame ceremony was supposed to end at 10 PM, marking the beginning of this card, but it ran to almost midnight. At 10 PM there was just nothing for the fight fans at all. No indication that we needed to find it in a different source or any acknowledgement of delay. Just nothing. I ended up finding it on my own on the WatchESPN app, but this was insanely unprofessional from the supposed world wide leader of sports. If I was Bob Arum and Top Rank, I would be irate.
