Vasyl Lomachenko vs Anthony Crolla ring walk time: When will main event in Los Angeles be?
Vasyl Lomachenko defended his WBA and WBO lightweight belts on Friday night with a violent fourth-round stoppage of Britain’s Anthony Crolla.
Lomachenko (13-1, 10 KOs) brutalized the mandatory challenger for his WBA belt throughout their fight, nearly ending it late in the third round when the Ukrainian star knocked Crolla into the ropes.
Referee Jack Reiss allowed the fight to continue, and Lomachenko finished after the break with a right hand that dropped Crolla face-first onto the canvas with a broken nose.
Lomachenko showed the folly of this matchup by thoroughly outclassing Crolla (34-7-3), a tough but overmatched contender. Lomachenko had hoped to take on Richard Commey in a three-belt unification fight, but Commey’s injured hand forced Lomachenko’s promoters to make this fight.
Welcome to The Independent's live coverage as Vasyl Lomachenko defends his WBA and WBO lightweight world titles against Manchester's Anthony Crolla in Los Angeles.
It would be the biggest shock in British boxing history. It would go down as a huge win. There are many fighters who have been in this situation but Anthony has zero fear. He's ready to challenge himself and face the very best and he's in great shape.
There's just one fight to go before the main event as Gilberto Ramirez, the WBO super-middleweight champion, moves up to test the waters at 175lbs against Tommy Karpency.
A dominant start for Ramirez who, despite moving up a division, has a pronounced size advantage and after taking a minute to scope his opponent begins to pepper Karpency's eye with the jab and wings a pair of hooks into the ribcage. Not much coming back from Karpency.
An increasingly ragged round for Karpency who takes a number of clean shots and looks momentarily shaken. He attempts to respond with wild shots but they're only beating up clean air. There's a huge gap in class between the pair and it feels like just a matter of time until Ramirez secures the stoppage.
This is an ugly one-sided beatdown by this point, and we're only three rounds in. Ramirez is bigger, fresher, and fitter and his southpaw left hands are breaking clean through Karpency's guard, whose eyes are looking puffy while blood seeps from his forehead.
At the end of the fourth, the referee heads to the corner to ask if Karpency is okay, his father, who is his trainer, pulls him out of the fight.
The crowd are booing but it was clearly the right decision. He never showed anything that hinted he may have a chance in this mismatch, and there was only one inevitable end.
