Vasyl Lomachenko decisions Jose Pedraza, unifies WBA and WBO titles

Vasyl Lomachenko is now a unified lightweight champion, beating fellow titleholder Jose Pedraza in an ESPN main event to take both the WBA and WBO titles with official scores of 119-107, 117-109, and 117-109. BLH also scored the fight for Lomachenko, 117-109.

The fight was a pretty tentative affair for the first half of the fight, with neither fighter landing many clean shots, but Lomachenko was able to land the more clean shots which had him winning the rounds on the cards. By mid-fight Lomachenko had a solid margin on the cards, but the fight was closer in the ring than it was on paper.

However in the championship rounds Lomachenko really started to come on, particularly in the 11th round where Lomachenko stepped it up and put a real hurtin’ on Pedraza, dropping him twice with Pedraza barely making it out of the round.

In the 12th round it was clear that Pedraza was still shaken up from the previous round, but he tried to put up a valiant effort to fight back as best he can. Unfortunately it just wasn’t enough.

During the post-fight interview Lomachenko credited Pedraza as being a tough and tricky fighter, which is why he couldn’t score the stoppage victory. Lomachenko (12-1, 9 KOs) said he was hoping to land a fight with Mikey Garcia going forward, while Pedraza (25-2, 12 KOs) was gracious in defeated, knowing he was beaten by a better man.