The Pivots and Precision of Vasyl Lomachenko

It's rare that I watch a fighter with handful of bouts to his name and think that he is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. I realized that I felt this about Vasyl Lomachenko around his fourth professional fight. But then Lomachenko's numbers are misleading: he might have won just his seventh pro bout on Saturday but he holds almost four hundred amateur appearances to his name. He has had to grow and learn with the different rules and rounds of the professional game, but Lomachenko is as keen a technician as any man in the business and as deft under fire as the savviest professional. Most importantly though, he is a technically excellent boxer with that comfort under fire but still owns a flair for creativity. That is something we don't see enough of in any combat sport.

Going up a few pounds to super featherweight, Lomachenko stopped the rangier Roman Martinez on Saturday night with a corking uppercut to lead hook in the fifth round of a lopsided fight. The old '.45 combo'. While that clip has captured media attention and is the kind of finish that will quickly draw fans to Lomachenko it was the complete boxing game he demonstrated which made the fight a joy to watch.

Lomachenko is known for his lateral movement but he did good work at range through this contest. The angling game is where Lomachenko sets himself apart and looks so different to most other boxers in the game today, but he is every bit as competent standing directly in front of his opponent, painting the jab and sneaking in the left straight for damage.

That is the area of the fight in which you would expect someone with such a lengthy list of amateur accomplishments to excel. You do not get that many brawlers or infighters coming through with dozens of amateur titles as the shorter bouts and scoring systems tend to work for men who can put in the clean, clear shots and those mostly happen at range and in quick flurries rather than prolonged slogs on the inside. If you hear "396-1 amateur record" you should already be thinking "this lad will have some class on the outside". But it is interesting to consider that Lomachenko doesn't have a build that especially suits that range and gives up an inch or two of reach to plenty of other featherweights. He gave up two inches of reach and an inch of height to Martinez though it ended up seeming to be a non-factor.

Lomachenko quickly established his comfort at range, standing in front of Martinez and showing him dips to the left and right, level changes and feints. All to get a read on Martinez's movement and draw some pawing jabs out of him. As soon as it seemed like Martinez was about to tentatively commit to hitting, Lomachenko cut him down, as the swordsman Miyamoto Musashi would say, "on the 's' in 'strike'"

Southpaws with great jabs are a rare breed. Perhaps this is because it is often easier to just handfight with the lead hand, look for the rear hand power shots and make the most of being an oddity up to a certain level of the game. Even Manny Pacquiao, one of the best southpaws in boxing to date, doesn't use his jab as much more than an opener and closer to combinations and is largely inaccurate with it as an outfighting weapon. Lomachenko showed not only an accurate jab, but the stunning left straight for which the southpaw should be feared.

Lomachenko is also one of those boxers who works in what I like to call the 'grey areas'. Wrestling—of a certain kind—is a big part of the boxing game for those fighters who know its there. Lomachenko always looks to control his man's head position. As Martinez lunged to get in on the fleet-footed Ukrainian, Lomachenko would snap his head down and rest a forearm on the back of his neck to render his fists mute. It is tough to punch with impact when you are stooped at the waist and Lomachenko makes use of this just as Floyd Mayweather always did.

But to bend a man in half he has to do some of the work. Only very aggressive, crouched rushes will let Lomachenko lean on his man. More often the head control shows itself as Lomachenko redirects his man under his arm and throws them past him. Floyd Mayweather used this to connect sharp right hands as his opponent came up and Archie Moore and George Foreman both handled a good few men in the same way. Lomachenko mostly uses it to deflect his man and reset position.

Lomachenko suffered a stiff right hand from Martinez in the third round and this seemed to put him on the defensive for a moment. But Lomachenko timed Martinez's attempts to step in and make good on the change of momentum, breaking the champion's ability to follow up by immediately pivoting a tight angle around him. This breaking the line could be seen in Miguel Cotto's move up to middleweight as he utilized it to keep bigger men from getting on top of him: waiting for the right hand and immediately pivoting off of it.

Where Lomachenko really draws the eye is on his side steps and pivots and he hurts more of his opponents on the turn than anywhere else. In pivoting a fighter turns around one foot and the other is weightless—preventing him from transferring his weight into blows. This is one reason for the value of side stepping and forcing an opponent to turn. Another is that a fighter learns to defend himself against an opponent who is standing directly in front of him, his defense is largely useless against a man standing to his left or right side. What's more, as he turns to catch up the fighter is blind to what is coming at him. For this reason turning a man can mean an excellent chance to catch him with a hard blow through the front of the guard as he wheels around.

Where Lomachenko is exotic is in his use of body shots with his tight side steps. He will step off to the side and rather than swing for the opponent's head as they turn with their chin down and their hands up, he will blast their midsection. He can do this with a left uppercut straight to the solar plexus as he is stepping off line, or a left hook behind the right elbow as the opponent turns with him.

Stepping off to a tight angle on a fighter means that hooked blows and shorter uppercuts can enter through the front of his guard as a straight blow would. With less ground to cover and any preliminary motion being hidden from the other man by the move to an angle, these blows are among the most dangerous in the game. Mike Tyson's right uppercut from angling out to the left is one famous example of this.

That is not to say that Lomachenko is infallible. These tactics must be set up and used sparingly or there is the potential to run into a short hook coming from the direction in which he is moving. These are the sort of blows where the fighter rapidly moving into the strike can do most of the work to knock himself out. To create offensive opportunities a fighter has to get in the mix and there is an inherent danger to that.

One of the ways that Lomachenko keeps his man's mind off the angles until it's time is to step in and crowd or feign a clinch when he and his opponent get close. When Martinez pressed in, Lomachenko would step in to meet him with his shoulder in Martinez's sternum. Martinez would recognize that he wasn't going to get anything going and they would break (or Lomachenko would give him a cheeky bump with the shoulder). However Martinez didn't hold Lomachenko and that is the difference between a clinch and an active infight. So the next time Lomachenko crashed in chest to chest, he angled off and landed some free shots on a relaxed Martinez.

Those clean two count combinations have done the hurting in most of Lomachenko's pro fights. To the body and to the head in an instant. These swift pairings combined with the opponent turning almost guarantee one good blow to land. The end of the fight came due to a simple bit of outfighting though. After doing some bodywork, Lomachenko set up a left straight to the body from the outfight which looked to wind the champion.

Moments later, Lomachenko ducked in to feint the left to the body again. And then ducked in and threw an overhand instead. A second attempt at the Marciano eyes-down punch saw Lomachenko wobble Martinez.

Martinez covered up and bent forwards as Lomachenko advanced to finish but Lomachenko didn't rush. Rather than swing an uppercut a little late and clue Martinez in on it, Lomachenko let Martinez stand up, then showed him a flaccid right hook which sent Martinez back into the crouch. That was then the Ukrainian timed a perfect left uppercut which lifted Martinez's head from behind his gloves and allowed the right hook which inevitably followed to turn Martinez's head around. The first knockdown saw Martinez unable to beat the count and Lomachenko added another title to his collection.

And that's the fun of watching Vasyl Lomachenko fight. He's technical and as comfortable in the ring as anyone out there, but he has that violent streak. Better yet, he's got too few pro fights for there to be the usual "he's ducking [my favourite fighter]" which follows every top flight boxer in the world today. Finally, he's doing stuff that you aren't seeing from a lot of other fighters and he's looking damn good while doing it. There will be detractors out there soon enough, but it's pretty hard to build a case against the entertaining knockout artist with the dancing feet right now.