Vasyl Lomachenko Retains WBO Lightweight Title
Vasyl Lomachenko needed just nine rounds to defend his WBO junior lightweight title with another dominating performance on April 8.
Lomachenko defeated challenger Jason Sosa with a ninth-round TKO after Sosa’s corner retired from the fight.
The champion was head hunting throughout the entire fight. Of the 275 punches landed on Sosa, 217 of them were on Sosa’s head. Sosa was not able to find any rhythm whatsoever offensively, having only landed 68 punches out of 286 thrown in the whole fight.
This was Lomachenko’s first fight in 2017 and second defense of the title, with his last fight taking place back in November. Lomachenko last defended his title against Nicholas Walters with a similar performance and similar result.
What’s next for Lomachenko remains to be seen. What is certain is that Lomachenko now wants more title fights, whether it would be unifying the other junior lightweight titles, or move up to lightweight and get unification bouts there. One possible opponent for Lomachenko is WBO lightweight titleholder Terry Flanagan, who defended his belt earlier in the day against Petr Petrov in Manchester, England.
Flanagan had already expressed interest in fighting Lomachenko and Lomachenko said he would be up for a fight against Flanagan as well.
“I’m going to call [Top Rank chairman] Bob [Arum] and tell him I only want to fight champions,” Lomachenko said after the fight. “I am going to ask if we can get any of the 130-pound champions. If they refuse to fight, I’m going to move up to 135. I’d like to fight [Flanagan in England. [WBC lightweight champion Mikey] Garcia would be a great fight. I’d like to make that fight soon.”
The other title fight on the card, which was televised on HBO, was WBO cruiserweight champion Oleksandr Usyk defeating Michael Hunter via unanimous decision (117-110, 117-110, 117-110).
