If you thought Deontay Wilder's reaction to being defeated by Tyson Fury was wild, Vasiliy Lomachenko has gone a step further by suggesting the three judges who ruled Teofimo Lopez Jr. the winner of their Oct. 17 bout were bribed to do so.
The highly-anticipated showdown between two of the world's top lightweights took place inside a COVID-19 "bubble" at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, and resulted in scores of 116-112, 117-111 and 119-109, all in favor of the unbeaten American.
The majority of viewers agreed with the assessment that underdog Lopez had done enough to outpoint the highly-decorated Olympic gold medalist, but judge Julie Lederman's opinion that Lomachenko lost every round but one was universally criticized.
Nonetheless, when the Ukrainian finally broke his silence on the fight, which saw Lopez add Lomachenko's WBA (Super), WBO and The Ring belts to his IBF title, very few could have seen such accusations coming.
“If we counted strictly by the book, the scorecards would be different,” said Lomachenko on his official YouTube channel. “I didn’t lose the fight. I watched it around five times. I took the second round, he took the first, third, fourth and fifth. The sixth remains questionable. However, his win reflects bias against myself.
“I took one round from the first half of the fight and five rounds from the second half – from round seven to round 11. We’ve got six each, which is a draw.
“And if we use the unspoken rule of boxing, we look for rounds 10 to 12 [the ‘championship rounds’]. I won two of them. It’s 2-1. Even if I won three rounds in the first half of the fight, I wouldn’t win the fight for the scorecards.
“What does it say? It’s not about bias, it’s about being bribed. There was nothing about honest judging. I don’t know whose game it was. I do think it was somebody’s game.”
Days after the defeat, Lomachenko underwent shoulder surgery on a nagging issue that was aggravated by training camp for the Lopez contest. The injury was not explicitly cited by Lomachenko as a reason why he lost, but when his team posted a video of his hospital visit, supporters of his made the connection.
That led to Lopez telling ESPN: "I was coming into this fight injured as well, if you wanna talk about injuries, but I didn’t make no excuses about it. I think that by him doing that, as someone who was considered the number one, pound-for-pound, best boxer in the whole world, to use that excuse, it just looks more bad on him than anything else.”
Lopez also stated he had no intention of giving Lomachenko a rematch, but the ex-champ isn't willing to let it rest, going as far as to confirm he believes his shoulder cost him victory and hinting that he may retire if he lost to Lopez a second time.
“I want this revenge,” Lomachenko added. “I think it will figure everything out. Either it will be the end of my career, or I’ll take all the belts.
“I think there should be revenge. The question is if he agrees to the revenge, I think he won’t. They are afraid because they know I had an injury and I won’t be the same without injury on the revenge.”
“They know that he can’t fight with me. He reached the top, he got lucky. He would [rather] hold the title as long as possible.
“He doesn’t want to fight with me because he will lose the belts. They do understand it, they won’t do this.
“They will trash talk, they will place conditions and, finally, they won’t fight.”
There are certainly parallels to be drawn between Lomachenko and Wilder, who was stopped by Tyson Fury for his WBC heavyweight title in February after the two drew in their first meeting.
Wilder first blamed his elaborate ring walk costume for his first professional defeat, claiming the gear was so heavy it drained his energy before the opening bell.
Then, after an even longer period away from the media than Lomachenko, during which his supporters began the "glovegate" conspiracy theory and suggested Fury's team slipped a metallic object into his mitt, Wilder finally added his voice to the claims and demanded his contracted rematch, which promoter Bob Arum has now expired.