Victor Salazar with ThaBoxingVoice.com had a chance to catch up with manager Egis Klimas. Klimas is a big reason so many Eastern European fighters are emerging on the American fight scene these days. Sergiy Kovalev, Evgeny Gradovich and Vyacheslav Glazkov are some of the fighters that are managed by Klimas.
We asked Klimas for an update on the status of another fighter managed by him. Vasyl Lomachenko defended his WBO featherweight title on November last year in Macau. The 26-year old Ukranian scored a unanimous decision shut out victory over mandatory challenger Chonlatarn Piriyapiny.
During the fight, the Olympic gold medalist of 2008 and 2012 hurt his left hand. After the fight, there was fear that the hand might be broken which would have set Lomachenko back for quite some time. However according to Klimas, the hand injury wasn’t as bad as expected and won’t cause a long lay-off.
“He just hurt his left hand a little bit”, Klimas told ThaBoxingVoice.com. “He continued very nicely after six rounds with one hand. His hand is healed now; it wasn’t broken.”
“Right now, we are just waiting for some TV and Top Rank approvals. Nothing yet to announce, everything is in the works.”
The fight at featherweight, which everybody is talking about, is a fight between Lomachenko and Nicholas Walters. The 28-year old Jamaican emerged on the scene last year with knockout victories over Vic Darchinyan and Nonito Donaire, winning the WBA version of the Featherweight title along the way.
With both fighters promoted by Top Rank, there should be no problem making the fight. Klimas confirmed their interest in the unification bout.
“The fight with Walters is what we want. I heard Walters is going to fight in April; probably Lomachenko will fight in April or May. After that they can meet. That would be a great fight for boxing.”
Like Klimas said, the unification bout won’t take place immediately. Both fighters are expected to defend their titles this spring. After these defenses, Walter-Lomachenko should be good to go.
