Vasiliy Lomachenko came short in his quest to win the undisputed lightweight championship against Devin Haney. The loss hurt, as is clear in this backstage footage from after the fight.
The Devin Haney vs. Vasiliy Lomachenko bout on Saturday night in Las Vegas was a classic war. Fans of the sport got to enjoy 12 rounds of truly elite champion level boxing. Unfortunately, they also got some questionable judging that threw a shadow over an otherwise amazing fight.
Haney came out strong early, but Lomachenko made adjustments and started turning things around in the latter half of the fight. In the end, the judges gave the unanimous decision win to Devin Haney with 116-112, 115-113, and 115-113 scores (watch the highlights here).
As with many fights where the comeback fighter gets snubbed, there were a lot of people upset that Lomachenko didn’t get the win. No one took it harder than Lomachenko himself, who was captured weeping in his locker room as his dream of winning an undisputed title ended.
An emotional Lomachenko reflects backstage. pic.twitter.com/DQGvsrOxBo
— Top Rank Boxing (@trboxing) May 21, 2023
ESPN filmed the moment and Top Rank posted it, showing an emotional Lomachenko in what probably should have been a private moment. Sensing it wasn’t something Team Loma wanted on the internet, someone threw a towel over his head.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” Lomachenko told ESPN later. “All the people saw what happened today. I can’t talk about this right now. It’s just, it’s not a comfortable moment for me.”
There’s a lot of debate over whether Lomachenko did enough to earn the win over Haney. It wasn’t a robbery by any stretch of the imagination. But we can all come together in agreeing that 116-112 for Haney is a garbage score, and is the kind of thing that drags down people’s faith in scores that were pretty acceptable.