‘Old man’ Vasiliy Lomachenko excited to prove he can still compete with the world’s elite lightweights

Vasiliy Lomachenko is becoming the lightweight division’s forgotten man. This is a guy who went 396-1 as an amateur while winning gold medals at the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008 and in London in 2012. He won a professional world title in his third bout, a second in a different weight class in his seventh bout and a third weight class title in his 12th.

For most of his career, he’s been ranked among the top pound-for-pound fighters in the world, and is ranked 10th in the current Yahoo Sports ratings.

The headlines and the talk center around the shiny new objects, undisputed champion Devin Haney, former two-division champion and 2016 Olympic gold medalist Shakur Stevenson as well as fighters like Ryan Garcia and Gervonta Davis.

Despite being 34 with two surgeries on his right shoulder on his résumé, Lomachenko is right there with the best of them and could, on any given night, defeat any one of them.

He’s been out of action for 10 months because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and boxing is one of those sports where if you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind.

He aims to remind those who may have forgotten about his prodigious talents that he’s still one of the world’s elite when he faces Jamaine Ortiz on Saturday at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York. At BetMGM, Lomachenko is a 25-1 favorite to defeat Ortiz

Ortiz is only 26, and is coming off an impressive victory over former world champion Jamel Herring. He’s the kind of guy veterans often ignore because there is little to gain for them in a fight like this.

“He’s young and ambitious, he’s undefeated and he has a quiver of techniques and other things in boxing,” Lomachenko said as a means of explaining why he took the fight.

Top Rank vice president Carl Moretti said that Lomachenko has become a target for young fighters because he has the biggest name among all the lightweights and they may perceive him to be slipping.

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So for a fighter like Ortiz, Lomachenko is the perfect opponent. If — and if is the operative word here — Lomachenko is slipping, it hasn’t been clearly obvious. Since losing to Teofimo Lopez in 2020, Lomachenko had his second surgery on his right shoulder. He then came back to stop Masayoshi Nakatani in nine and then routed Richard Commey by wide decision. Two judges gave Lomachenko 11 of the 12 rounds and the third gave him nine of 12.

“I think a lot of the younger fighters look at Loma and they want to fight him now when they never did before because they know he has the big name, they see him as an older fighter and they think that maybe he’s stepping down or regressing a bit,” Moretti said. “You didn’t hear that talk two years ago. Teofimo back then is the only [elite young fighter] who stepped up and wanted to fight him, and Teofimo deserves credit for that. Loma’s all about the titles. His whole focus is on getting the titles back.”

Given his layoff because of the war with Russia, he said it didn’t make sense to immediately come back against the super elite of the division. But he took Ortiz because Ortiz is unbeaten and coming off an impressive win over a former champion.

Moretti said the plan for Lomachenko is to challenge Haney for the undisputed lightweight championship if he wins. That’s what motivates Lomachenko and gets him up early in the morning.

Lomachenko said he’s made adjustments in his training as the years have added, but said he’s not thinking at all about retirement. He told Yahoo Sports his next two years will be taken up pursuing fights against the likes of Haney, Stephenson, Garcia and Davis. But even at that point, he plans to continue.

He’s one of the smartest fighters in the business, both in the ring and in how he prepares himself. And he knows he’s physically different at 34 than he was at 24.

“Of course I have to adjust,” Lomachenko said. “Years only add up. They never go in the other direction. I need more time to recover now than I used to. I remember it was a half-a-day I needed to recover and now I need the entire day. The approach changed somewhat as a result. We decreased the workload and we added more time for recovery.”

None of that has decreased his belief in himself or his confidence that he’ll be able to handle any lightweight put in front of him.

Lomachenko grinned as he said, “This fight against a young and ambitious fighter will show whether it’s the case,” that he’s physically declined.

Moretti said Top Rank is confident that the surgeries went will and got him back to where he needs to be. He said he’s not concerned Lomachenko will be compromised by his shoulder.

“The shoulder’s repaired and he feels good physically,” Moretti said. “Maybe athletically, he’s not what he once was, but physically he is good and you need to have that. Physically, he’s fine. Now, does the wear and tear of a long camp affect him? Will he get hit with things he’s never been hit with before? If it turns into a war, I think we’ll know he’s not quite the fighter he was. But I don’t think his father would let him fight if he felt he was not healthy or able to perform at a high level.”