.jpg)
A Gervonta Davis-Vasiliy Lomachenko lightweight matchup is music to Calvin Ford’s ears. (photo by Ryan Hafey)
Ford, the longtime trainer of Baltimore’s Davis, recently expounded his thoughts about that hypothetical pairing, and suffice to say he was enthusiastic. A Davis-Lomachenko all-southpaw fight would obviously garner massive attention as one of the best fights one could make in the competitive lightweight division, but like so many of the most intriguing matchups in the sports, it is hampered by politics; Davis is promoted by Premier Boxing Champions, while Lomachenko is backed by rival entity Top Rank.
Discord aside, count Ford, as well as Davis, as a fan of that fight.
“We waitin’ on that fight, you know what I’m sayin’?” Ford told Elie Seckbach of ES News. “We waitin’ on that fight. Like I said, it’s gonna be a chess match. It’s gonna be a chess match.”
A Davis-Lomachenko bout has been floated as a possibility for a number of years, stretching back to when Davis was still campaigning at 130 pounds, but it does not appear serious negotiations ever took place. Davis, moreover, acknowledged at one point that his handlers – Al Haymon and Floyd Mayweather Jr. – were not in a rush to put him into a fight with the Ukrainian as they had a plan in place to groom him into an attraction.
“Me and Floyd, we actually talked about it,” Davis said in 2019 referring to the Lomachenko fight . “Even me and Al talked about it, you know? But it’s about making it at the right time. Everything don’t happen overnight. We know that Al and [Top Rank head] Bob Arum, they did business together before. But it be hard making fights with them, too. But I’m just a student of the game. I have a great team. I’m just following their lead.”
Since that period, the hard-hitting Davis (26-0, 24 KOs) has emerged as one of the handful of American fighters with bonafide crossover appeal and has fought his last three fights on pay-per-view. Davis, 27, is coming off a 12-round unanimous decision over Isaac Cruz in December at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
The 33-year-old Lomachenko (16-2, 11 KOs) was also in the ring in December, defeating Richard Commey by unanimous decision at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The two-time Olympian and three-division world champion unified the lightweight division before giving up his belts in a loss to Teofimo Lopez in 2020.
Now the two-time Olympic gold medal winner is the frontrunner to face unified light lightweight champion George Kambosos, who unseated Lopez last year.
Ford made it clear that Lomachenko is still an attractive proposition in his team’s eyes.
“I don’t know if Loma gonna take the chances that he takes [with other fighters as he does] with Tank, but that’s like a mega fight to tell you the truth,” Ford said. “That’s the fight people been waitin’ on.”
Ford is convinced the fight must happen at some point down the line.
“I think ’22 is going to be a real interesting year for all of them to tell you the truth because they gotta fight each other. They gotta fight each other,” Ford said.