Home Boxing News Vasiliy Lomachenko knows time is ticking on his career ahead of Devin...

Vasiliy Lomachenko knows time is ticking on his career ahead of Devin Haney undisputed title fight

Devin Haney and Vasiliy Lomachenko

Former three-division world champion Vasiliy Lomachenko 17-2 (11) knows that he is in the final stages of his boxing career ahead of clash with Devin ‘The Dream’ Haney 29-0 (15) for the WBC, WBA, WBO and IBF lightweight championships at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada on Saturday night.

The 35-year-old Ukrainian southpaw might have only had 19 professional bouts, but with an extensive amateur career that saw him bag two Olympic gold medals along with two World Championship victories across almost 400 fights, he recognises the end is near.

“I don’t have the time. I’m not young. It’s only one fight, four belts, and now it’s close, it’s very close,” Lomachenko said to Top Rank Boxing.

Lomachenko’s manager Egis Klimas believes his charge has one more big fight left in him.

“When Loma started his career, he was the one that was always pushing. Every division has to have only one champion, which means the undisputed,” Klimas said.

Lomachenko looked virtually unbeatable up until October 2020 when he dropped a unanimous decision to Teofimo Lopez 18-1 (13) in a unification bout, losing his WBA and WBO titles to the IBF champion. Since then he has won three fight in a row to get himself back into world title contention. He stopped Masayoshi Nakatani 20-3 (14) in nine, pitched a virtual shutout against Richard Commey 30-5-1 (27) and had some trouble against Jamaine Ortiz 16-1-1 (8) en route to a unanimous decision victory in his most recent bout last October.

Lomachenko has always coveted undisputed championship status.

“If you recall, ten years ago, nobody was the undisputed champion,” Kilmas continued. “He went from 126. We couldn’t get unified fights. 130, we couldn’t get unified fights. He went to 135 for the bigger guys to go into undisputed.”

If Lomachenko had beaten Lopez, he would have been within a sniff of full title unification against WBC champion Haney. Instead, Australia’s George ‘Ferocious’ Kambosos Jr defeated Lopez on points and went into a unification bout with Haney.

Kambosos Jr lost their first fight on points, enacted the rematch clause in his contract, losing again on the cards leaving Haney with all the belts at 135-pounds.

“In professional boxing, we have four belts. You can be a world champion in one organisation,” said Lomachenko.

“How do we have four different champions in one weight class? It looks like a race with a lot of cars and two cars will be two first places. How? I can’t take it.

“For me, it’s only one world champion. It’s not hard to wake up at five in the morning, but this is the price you’ll pay for your dream. You’ll be undisputed world champion.”

Haney has respect for Lomachenko but as the bigger man at the weight, he is confident he will have the little master’s measure.

“Loma has a good resume,” Haney said. “He has a lot of names on his resume that fought in the lower weight classes, but every time Loma has fought somebody that didn’t come to lay down, he lost, and that’s just reality.”

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