Nicholas Walters’ sixth-round knockout of Nonito Donaire to win a featherweight world title last Saturday night at the StubHub Center in Carson, California, was very exciting and quite impressive, and the big puncher from Jamaica known as the “Axe Man” has another big fight to look forward to if everything goes as planned.
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum said Thursday that he would like to match Walters (25-0, 21 KOs) with Vasyl Lomachenko (2-1, 1 KO) in a unification fight next year, although not necessarily next.
First off, Arum liked what he saw in Walters, who dropped Donaire for the first two times in his career on the way to the big knockout in a somewhat dominating performance.
“[He] did extraordinarily well on Saturday beating Donaire,” Arum said.
Arum co-promotes Walters and also represents Lomachenko, so making the unification bout would be a relatively easy deal to make. But Lomachenko, the brilliant, two-time Olympic gold medalist from Ukraine, first has to take care of his business in Macau, China, on the Manny Pacquiao-Chris Algieri undercard Nov. 22 (HBO PPV). He faces mandatory challenger Chonlatarn Piriyapinyo (52-1, 33 KOs) of Thailand.
“I have always thought Lomachenko is a special talent and one of the greatest fighters around so it would be silly if they didn’t fight sometime next year,” Arum said of the Walters match. “Lomachenko is fighting only his fourth professional fight, and he’s fighting Chonlatarn Piriyapinyo of Thailand, with [52] wins and one defeat. He lost [two] years ago to Chris John [in a featherweight title fight] and of his [52] victories, 33 of them have been by knockout. So Lomachenko has his work cut out for him. So believe me, this fight on Nov. 22 is hardly a gimme.
“Piriyapinyo deserves his No. 1 ranking, so that should be a very good fight. So yes, if Lomachenko is successful, I would anticipate a fight with Walters sometime next year.”
It would seem that if Lomachenko wins, he and Walters would both have at least one more fight before a unification fight, which is reasonable. Let’s just hope Arum doesn’t allow this one to marinate for too long and risk losing it, like he did with another big-time featherweight unification fight many wanted to see between Juan Manuel Lopez and Yuriorkis Gamboa a few years ago. How’d that work out?