Vasiliy Lomachenko vs Teofimo Lopez Fight!!! ????

Vasiliy Lomachenko vs Teofimo Lopez is going down Saturday night and the fight is on ESPN+ This is the fight of the year in my eyes. From the time Teófimo López turned pro as a teenager after the 2016 Olympics, the heavy-handed Brooklyn native was billed not only as a future world champion but as boxing’s next major star.

After taking the express lane from prospect to contender with one highlight-reel knockout after another, López made the first part look easy in December when he demolished the rugged veteran Richard Commey inside two rounds to capture the IBF lightweight championship. The second part is where it may get more complicated. On Saturday night, the 23-year-old López will climb through the ropes at the MGM Grand Conference Center for a lightweight title unification showdown with Vasiliy Lomachenko, the three-weight champion from Ukraine widely regarded as boxing’s pound-for-pound best, in the most anticipated fight since the Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder rematch back in the beforetimes. The scheduled 12-round encounter has been grandiloquently framed as a clash of experience v youth, impeccable skill v weapons-grade power, a storied legacy v a future of limitless promise. But the breathless promotional bluster can be condensed to a simple topline: Lomachenko, the two-time Olympic gold medalist who holds the WBA and WBO titles at 135lbs, represents the hardest test in boxing today. And López, after a scant 15 paying fights, might just be the type of rare generational talent with the skills to meet it. “It’s everything,” said López during Wednesday’s final press conference, where the ill temper and trash talk that had marked the nearly two-year build-up gave way to a more subdued tenor. “It’s the best fighting the best, and that’s what it comes to. All the belts. Everything’s on the line in Vegas, just like everything else. All in.”

Born to Honduran parents in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Sunset Park before the family moved to south Florida, López took up boxing when he was six and embarked on a decorated amateur career that included a national Golden Gloves title in 2015. He won the lightweight division at the US Olympic trials, but was forced to compete for Honduras at the Rio Games when he was left off the American team on a technicality. By the end of the year he’d signed with Top Rank, drawn in by the promotional giant’s track record of developing Olympians into professional stars, including Oscar De La Hoya, Floyd Mayweather and Miguel Cotto.