It marked the first time Nakatani (19-2) was stopped in a fight, with his only other loss coming by way of decision, at the hands of Lopez in 2019.<\/p>\n
Lomachenko landed 59 per cent of his power punches, as he dominated from the opening bell, peppering Nakatani with a steady stream of hard, straight lefts. Lomachenko was only hit by 12 per cent of Nakatani's power punches.<\/p>\n
Lomachenko\u2019s biggest round prior to the ninth was a destructive sixth, during which he landed a number of punches that caused Nakatani\u2019s head to snap backward several times, eventually bloodying the Osaka-native\u2019s eye, nose and mouth.<\/p>\n
Lomachenko also knocked down Nakatani in the fifth, using a three-punch combo near the end of the round.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In his last fight, Nakatani was knocked down twice by Felix Verdejo before responding with a ninth-round KO win. This time, Nakatani never stood a chance as he was outclassed by the former pound-for-pound Ukranian great in every round.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve accomplished my goals and I\u2019m back on track,\u201d Lomachenko said.<\/p>\n
With the win, Lomachenko is hoping to land a rematch against Lopez, who was set for his first title defense in Miami on June 19 until he tested positive for COVID-19. His mandatory bout against George Kambosos, and the entire undercard, has been rescheduled for August 14 in Miami, but could be moved to September 11 in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
Lopez\u2019s father, Teofimo senior, was in attendance and told ESPN prior to the fight his son's camp is willing to grant the rematch, but with the caveat it had to happened immediately after the Kambosos bout.<\/p>\n
Lomachenko\u2019s loss to Lopez cost the 33-year-old his WBA and WBO lightweight titles and left the former unified champion on the outside looking in on a division that inherited a youth movement of undefeated fighters, including Lopez (16-0), Gervonta Davis (24-0), Devin Haney (26-0) and Ryan Garcia (21-0).<\/p>\n
A Lopez rematch could take place later this year or in early 2022, while Top Rank\u2019s Bob Arum mentioned matches against Haney and Tank Davis for Lomachenko.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the 10-round middleweight co-feature, 2016 Olympian Janibek Alimkhanuly (10-0, 6 knockouts) continued his ascension up the ladder of contenders with an impressive technical knockout destruction of former world champion Rob Brant (26-3, 18 knockouts). The fight was stopped after the eighth round, when Brant\u2019s cornermen requested referee Michael Ortega.<\/p>\n
While Alimkhanuly landed 46 per cent of his power punches (65 of 142, including 20 to the body), Brant struggled the entire fight to find confidence to challenge inside, vividly cautious of Alimkhanuly\u2019s counter punches.<\/p>\n
\u201cEver since I turned pro, I wanted a big fight like this,\u201d Alimkhanuly said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever a title shot comes, I\u2019ll be ready."<\/p>\n
For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/strong><\/em> clicking here!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former three-weight world champion Vasiliy Lomachenko was successful in his return to the ring, stopping Japanese veteran Masayoshi Nakatani in the ninth round last night. […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91589"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91589"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91591,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91589\/revisions\/91591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}