"I don't think he should have gotten a title shot in only his second fight as a pro," stated world-class trainer Jeff Mayweather, who had a lot to say about featherweight prospect Vasyl Lomachenko, who in was given an opportunity to fight for a world title in just his second professional fight. Although Lomachenko fell short of capturing the title, losing a split decision to former champion Orlando Salido this past Saturday, Mayweather strongly believes that the fact he even got an opportunity is an insult to the sport of boxing and a slap in the face of those fighters who fought their way up the rankings. Check out what else he had to say!
JEFF MAYWEATHER ON VASYL LOMACHENKO'S TITLE SHOT:
"To be honest, I think it's disrespectful to professional boxing. Obviously this guy has a ton of money behind him, and money can make anything happen. And that's the reason why it happened. It ain't for nothing to do with the guy's talent or nothing like that because in professional boxing, you are supposed to earn a title shot. You have to put in the work to get in the position to be able to fight for a title. How can you take this guy at 1-0 and throw him into a title fight over these guys who been fighting for years to get themselves ranked in the #1 position and #10 position and you can just catapult yourself all the way over everyone? I think it's bad for boxing and I think it's disgraceful to boxing. It's another black eye to boxing because what did he do to earn it? I don't care how many amateur fights he had."
"Even when they did it with Leon Spinks, at least he had 7 fights, and that's even bad. That was a different time, but boxing now has become loose anyway. You have stuff now that never happened in the past. Ray Leonard was the first one to start with the catchweights. Now you have guys winning world titles at 142 and 43 and supposed to be welterweight titles. I don't know what kind of welterweight that is being competed at 142 or 143 pounds. So boxing is kind of becoming loose and I think a lot of it has to do with so much money to be made in boxing, especially with these boxing sanctioning bodies. I mean, that's what it's about at the end of the day. That's why you have all of these new sanctioning bodies coming up because it's all about money. And if you got somebody willing to pay those sanctioning fees, then the door is wide open. And if you are willing to pay for it, they will create a title for you. Boxing is going back to the old old days where basically you could buy a fight. That's basically the way it is now. Everybody wants to be a champion. They got a thousand belts out there, so if you want to be champion, all you gotta do is pay sanctioning fees. You might not be the best champion out there, but you still can have a belt."
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]