Don’t forget about him yet.
That was the message Vasiliy Lomachenko delivered Sunday morning in Perth, Australia, with an 11th-round knockout of former lightweight champion George Kambosos Jr. that reunited Lomachenko with a lightweight belt and revived him as a player among a prominent group of younger fellow titleholders.
Capping a punishing display that left Kambosos (21-3, 10 KOs) cut at the right eye and reeling from an onslaught of creatively delivered powerful blows, Lomachenko (18-3, 12 KOs) showed at age 36 that he remains a vibrant player among a cast of gifted prime-timers.
“He’s after Frank [Martin], let me get Frank first,” unbeaten WBA lightweight champion Gervonta “Tank” Davis said on X as Lomachenko was completing his destruction.
While Davis is headlining a June 15 pay-per-view card in Las Vegas against Martin, Lomachenko also has another strongly positioned champion in WBC belt holder Shakur Stevenson, 26, and expected new WBO champion Emanuel Navarrete, 29, waiting for him.
Top Rank’s Bob Arum, who promotes both Lomachenko and Stevenson for now, said last week that he wants to pit those two against each other.
Even if Stevenson, with his Top Rank contract expiring following his July 6 bout, defects to another promoter, Navarrete, pursuing a fourth division belt Saturday in his WBO lightweight title fight in San Diego, could provide a tantalizing test.
Creating this buzz was the work of Lomachenko, who, by knocking out Kambosos, did what current 140-pound champions Devin Haney and Teofimo Lopez couldn’t do against the rugged Australian.
With Kambosos fading in the 11th, Lomachenko went for the kill with a liver shot that first knocked down the former champion, whose beating silenced his supportive crowd estimated around 15,000 at RAC Arena.
Kambosos got up from that knockdown, but the savvy Lomachenko went right back to the body and battered Kambosos with two hard punches that sent the referee to wave off the bout right as Kambosos’ father threw in the towel.
Lomachenko was sharp from the first round, and stepped hard on the gas in the fourth, outlanding Kambosos 21-1, according to CompuBox, by battering the home-country fighter with creative maneuvering as the one-dimensional former lightweight titleholder was reduced to being a one-trick pony.
Kambosos hoped his union with new trainer Anton Kadushin would create a better solution to the dynamic Lomachenko, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and three-division world champion seeking to win his first title bout since 2019.
An extended break to assist in the Ukrainian war effort, surrounded by narrow losses on the scorecards to Lopez and Haney, sidelined Lomachenko from the discussion over who stood tallest among the young core of Haney, Lopez, Davis and Ryan Garcia.
Consider Sunday morning’s victory in Perth his re-entry into the conversation.
