Lomachenko vs Crolla

Vasiliy Lomachenko retained his WBO and WBA lightweight titles on Saturday, knocking out Anthony Crolla in the fourth round to move to 13-1 for his professional career.

It wasn’t a close bout, not at all. Crolla lasted into the fourth round, but had very little offense at all outside of the first round. He was consistently backed up and out-boxed by Lomachenko, and had very little room to throw his own punches.

Lomachenko got Crolla up against the ropes late in the third round and hit him with a flurry that lasted about 15-20 seconds on its own, and resulted in a technical knockdown. Lomachenko briefly thought he had won the fight, but Crolla survived to the fourth round.

There, he ran into a one-hitter from Lomachenko, a right hook to the side of the head just outside of Crolla’s guard. Crolla faceplanted off the hit and it was a clean knockout for Lomachenko.

After the bout, Lomachenko made it clear that he plans to stay at 135 pounds to continue unifying titles.

In the featured bout of the undercard, Arnold Barboza Jr. downed Mike Alvardo in a dominant bout. He scored a knockout, as expected, and was definitely the highlight of the preliminary card.

The co-main event/other main card bout featured Gilberto Ramirez up against Tommy Karpency, at 175 pounds. Ramirez had a 168-pound belt but moved up to test the waters at the new weight class. And he looked great.

Karpency had nothing for Ramirez for four rounds. When he was on the offensive, he ate vicious counters. When he was backing up, Ramirez threw together some beautiful, powerful combinations.

Ramirez didn’t take a single big shot on his own chin, and Karpency, who was looking at his corner often in the third and fourth rounds, threw in the towel after the fourth round.