George Kambosos claims things fell apart for him when he was hit by a shot on the back of his head in the fourth or fifth round of his fight against Vasily Lomachenko, resulting in things going downhill for him in his eleventh-round knockout loss in Perth, Australia.
Early Success Turns Sour
Kambosos (21-3, 10 KOs) felt that things were going well for him in the first quarter of the fight, and that he was following his game plan, but unfortunately, things unraveled for him after he was clipped by Lomachenko (18-3, 12 KOs) in the fourth or fifth.
Lomachenko was in control of the fight from round one, neutralizing Kambosos’ offense entirely, hitting and making him miss many of his shots. In the eleventh, Lomachenko went for the finish, knocking a bloody Kambosos down with body shots.
The referee stopped the fight after the second knockout, and at the same time, Kambosos’s corner threw in the towel. Some would argue the fight should have been stopped after the first knockdown. Kambosos had been dropped with a punch to the head that the referee ruled was a slip. It wasn’t.
That was a clean shot from Lomachenko, and Kambosos was too hurt to defend himself against the body shots that followed. After Kambosos got to his feet from the headshot, Lomachenko looked amused. He knew that was hurt.
He knew that Kambosos was done for, and that’s poured it on, focusing on throwing to the body. Interestingly, Lomachenko had thrown almost no body shots during the fight until the final sequence in round 11.
You have to wonder if Loma had targeted Kambosos’ body early on whether he would have been able to knock him out in the first half of the fight.
Kambosos’ Perspective
“We did very good, we stuck to the game plan, but unfortunately, the fight started to change. I think in rounds four or five, he did catch me with a shot in the back of that side of the equilibrium and it kind of buzzed me,” said Kambosos at the post-fight press conference, trying to make sense of what went wrong for him in his loss to Lomachenko last Saturday.
“That kind of changed things around in the fight. I’m a blood and guts warrior.”
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