When boxing gets back to work, the sport's bossmen would be criminally negligent if they didn't take a deep dive into the fertile lightweight waters.
And I'm referring to what I call the Lightweight Pentagon-- Vasiliy Lomachenko...Gervonta Davis...Devin Haney...Teofimo Lopez...Ryan Garcia.
Mix and match any of these guys and we got awesomeness. And it's not like they haven't been busy this last month or so promoting the fuck out of their intra-divisional rivalries.
"I'm going to enjoy knocking him the fuck out and not feel any remorse whatever," Lopez told CBS Sports, referring to Lomachenko. "That's just it. I do not personally like the guy...When that day comes when we fight, I can't wait. I can't wait to knock his head off and that's just that."
Boom.
"I really think he’s a good boxer. He’s a top fighter," Lomachenko returned fire. "He’s young, he’s hungry, he has big power, and I want this fight...He’s a world champion, and he holds my belt. The IBF title...The interesting thing for me, it will be to look into his eyes and his father’s eyes and see their reaction, after the fight.”
Oh Yeah.
"Ryan Garcia has the fan base. Not the skills but the fanbase, like Oscar De La Hoya did,” Lopez said, taking aim at "Kingry" before shifting focus to Gervonta "Tank" Davis. “The problem with Tank is that he can be so much more than what he is. But he doesn’t have the discipline at all. His discipline is shit."
Garcia, meanwhile, fired right around Lopez, also taking aim at Gervonta Davis.
“He’s a talented fighter, and he’s got OK skills," Garcia told Fighthype.com "But there’s one thing that he wasn’t blessed with and that’s height. He’s never going to be able to touch me, and I don’t care about him on the inside. He’s short as fuck and he doesn’t have the reach. Whether you like it or not, he’s short as fuck. He’s not going to be able to reach me while backing up. When he sees all my skills, he’ll run away. I’m taking him down. I got some shit for him... he might run away like a bitch. You hear me, Gervonta Davis because you’re a bitch."
Davis hasn't been too much in the mix when it comes to this 135 lb. smack talking. He's been short and sweet about the Garcia call-out on social media.
"Relax lil man. It's gonna come and you know it like I know it...Yes you gotta little buzz but you not on my level," Davis responded via Twitter.
Devin Haney is also tossing about challenges and making some waves, sending an "Ima fuck u up, just letting u know" DM to Ryan Garcia.
"It's quarantine, you don't have nothing to do but think," Haney told DAZN News."Think, think and think, so I was just thinking about (fighting) Ryan Garcia, so I just sent him a text message."
"...In the lightweight division," Haney continued, " there's so many big fights to be made and if we wait for all of them, who knows what may happen...Guys may go up in weight, down in weight. Guys may fall off, guys may be beat by someone who they thought would never beat them. So, why not make these big fights happen, when we all could get paid, when we all could benefit off these big fights and so can the fans?"
For what it's worth, Garcia responded to the private challenge from Haney by once again, like he did with Lopez, firing at Gervonta Davis.
“Once I beat Gervonta Davis like I’ve been calling it, that’s going to be like history repeats itself with Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali...He got his respect. He was a loudmouth," Garcia said. "Once I beat Gervonta Davis’ ass, that’s when they’ll give me credit...
"I’m a fucking beast. I’m telling you. Once I beat Gervonta Davis’ ass...then I’m going to do it like Muhammad Ali and take it to a whole another level and start beating everyone’s ass."
Lomachenko, who's at the top of the food chain--at least when it comes to the media's competitive assessments-- seems to be taking aim at everyone.
"Right now, I don’t think he’s going to fight me," Lomachenko said of Davis. "He might want to fight me, but his promoters are not going to let him. Aside from him, that weight class is getting very interesting. We have a lot of good names in the weight class. Not (just) the champions, but they are in the rankings. So I think it’s a hard weight division.
"Yes, DAZN posted something about Haney, and he said he would knock me out. So that is why I answered him, ‘Hey, listen, are you serious?’ He has not fought anybody and now he is saying he is
going to knock me out? I said, ‘No problem, let’s do it'... Then he answered me right away saying, ‘Yes, we can do it.’ I said, ‘OK, I am ready.’ He knows I am ready."
It's hard not to be excited when the high-end fighters of a stacked division are seemingly so eager to put each other down. The realist says that many of these fights won't happen because of, well, boxing business. Even Lomachenko-Lopez, which was supposed to happen in May and, allegedly, is still in the works for post-Covid-19, is no guarantee. Although both fighters are signed with Top Rank, fighting on ESPN, one just gets that hunch that something will be fucked up along the way. Same deal with an all-DAZN Haney-Garcia match-- there's no real guarantee that it'll actually happen.
But boxing needs to light this shit up. It's a powder keg and nobody wants to hear that bullshit about wrong sides of fences, scaling company walls, and business impossibilities. Especially now, after all this virus mess and all this forced downtime, the fans deserve good fights that actually mean something.
The lightweight division is a garden screaming to be harvested. It'd be a damn shame if nobody could figure out a way to reap some rewards from this abundance of talent.
Got something for Magno? Send it here: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com