Lomachenko’s rapid-fire blows too much for Koasicha in 10th round knockout
Vasyl Lomachenko lands a left to the head of Romulo Koasicha in the eighth round of their WBO featherweight title fight at the Thomas & Mack Center on Saturday.
An ever-punching Ukrainian showman with a distinguished amateur career has been touted as perhaps boxing’s most electric talent.
Saturday night, featherweight world champion Vasyl Lomachenko fulfilled the hype in a 10th-round knockout victory over Mexico’s Romulo Koasicha, who had never before knelt to the canvas.
At the 2-minute, 35-second mark of the 10th round, Lomachenko (5-1) capped a masterful showing by burying three hard left-handed punches to Koasicha’s gut, sending the challenger down for good.
“I was just having fun in there,” Lomachenko said after the co-main event that preceded the HBO-televised welterweight title bout between champion Timothy Bradley Jr. and Brandon Rios at Thomas and Mack Center. “If I wanted to knock him out, I would’ve done it earlier.”
In the World Boxing Organization title fight, two-time Olympic champion Lomachenko backed up Koasicha (25-5) in the first round, and spent the following rounds pummeling him with a multi-punch delivery to the head in the second, a hard right to the face and big left to the body in the third and more rapid-fire blows to the head in the fourth
“He hurt me to the body,” Koasicha said after getting hit 334 times while landing just 75 punches himself. “He’s very fast and very tricky.”
The champion’s ability to maneuver to position for a clean blow was impressive.
In the seventh, Lomachenko’s showmanship peaked when he ripped a right hand to the face, followed with a massive right uppercut that jarred Koasicha, then wound up a la Sugar Ray Leonard and whipped the challenger with the same left.
“I knew the end would be a body shot. I just didn’t know if it would be a right or a left,” Lomachenko said.
With unbeaten Cuban Guillermo Rigondeaux in wait, Lomachenko said he wants to unify the featherweight division after an earlier effort to do so fizzled when ex-champion Nicholas Walters missed weight this year and moved up to 130 pounds.
“Lomachenko will be the consensus pound-for-pound best in the world in a year or two years,” said his veteran fight promoter Bob Arum. “I’ve never been so high on a fighter. I was high on Oscar [De La Hoya] and Floyd, but [they were] a work in progress.”
Arum said he expects an impressive slew of opponents to emerge in 2016 for Lomachenko, including Rigondeaux and Nonito Donaire.
Earlier, Japan’s popular 2012 Olympic gold-medalist Ryoto Murata couldn’t finish seven-loss Gunnar Jackson in a middleweight bout, but easily won a unanimous decision by scores of 99-91, 98-92 and 97-93.
Murata (8-0) was determined to press the action and he landed the wealth of punches against the New Zealand product in Murata’s U.S. debut.
“I had a very exciting week in the U.S.,” Murata said. “I fought a very clever opponent. I was throwing punches and he was moving away. It was just different fighting here than in Japan.”
Murata expressed renewed interest in a rematch with his Olympic opponent, unbeaten Esquiva Falcao of Brazil.
“If Arum wants me to fight Falcao next, I’ll fight him next,” Murata said.
Earlier, Maryland super-lightweight Michael Reed improved to 17-0 with his 10th knockout by finishing Rondale Hubbert (10-4-1) with a flurry of unanswered punches in a corner, forcing referee Kenny Bayless to stop the fight at the 1:09 mark.
Tijuana featherweight Guillermo Avila proved he’s a survivor, but took an abundance of punishment in his unanimous-decision loss to Colombia’s Miguel Marriaga (21-1).
Marriaga, 29, fought for the first time since his first loss, a June 13 unanimous-decision defeat against Walters for the World Boxing Assn. “super” featherweight title.
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