It’s a brilliant match-up
BOXING is far from a perfect sport.
But two almost perfect boxers can showcase it in the purest form in the early hours of tomorrow.
Vasyl Lomachenko puts his WBO super-featherweight title on the line against former super-bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux at Madison Square Garden in New York.
It should be something to behold, a fight that boxing cherishes.
And it should be something anyone with an interest in sport watches, even if it is billed as one for the purists.
Science
There is no doubting that boxing is a dirty game, one rightly ridiculed at times for its politics that stop the best fights happening and corruption which ruins careers and not only the outcomes of bouts.
Then there are the life-changing, and sometimes life-ending, injuries that make this sport hard to defend, even for its biggest cheerleaders.
But in its purest form it can almost be art, it can be beautiful and it can be the ‘sweet science’ that it is famously nicknamed.
However, in the early hours of tomorrow, two of the very best at the true skills of this sport will meet at one of the world’s most famous fight venues and it has the recipe to be something to savour.
On show are four Olympic gold medals, four world amateur titles and over 700 bouts and less than a half-a-dozen defeats in the unpaid ranks with just one loss in the pro ranks between them.
That belongs to Ukrainian star Lomachenko, 29, but it is no slight on his ability, it was an overambitious attempt to win a world title in just his second professional fight, against Orlando Salido.
The Beijing and London Olympic gold medallist is possibly the most complete fighter in history with a superb defence, frighteningly fast footwork and a viciously quick attack.
The two-weight world champion may never build a record that will line him up along the likes of Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson and Sugar Ray Leonard, but some of his abilities surpass theirs – and what an entertainer!
So surely facing a 37-year-old who has often been inactive over a nine-year pro career and is moving up two weights should mean an easy night?
Not when it is Rigondeaux in the opposite corner, a man who was so good as an amateur he often got bored in bouts.
The Sydney and Athens Olympic champion escaped Castro’s Cuba at the second attempt on a speedboat to Mexico and then Miami in a plan hatched by an Irishman called Gary Hyde, who took inspiration from dancing star Michael Flatley.
Wrongly tainted as boring by those with influence in America that are blind to his talent, Rigondeaux is one of the greatest counter punchers the sport has ever seen.
The term slick southpaw should have been invented solely for him.
Lomachenko is the favourite, owing to his age, weight and size advantage, but there is still intrigue and that is what makes this fight the beautiful side of a sport that has often turned ugly.