Jorge Linares was not pleased with the referee's decision to stop his world title defense against Vasiliy Loamchenko on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Linares was stopped in the tenth round, which allowed Lomachenko to capture the World Boxing Association lightweight world title and make history in the process.
After getting outboxed in much of the first half - Linares then changed the tide when he dropped Lomachenko with a solid right hand.
Linares was working his way back into the fight - but then he got caught in the tenth round with a wicked hook to the liver, which put him down.
The Venezuelan fighter slowly got to his feet, but referee Ricky Gonzalez waved it off at 2:08 of the round to give Lomachenko the victory by technical knockout.
The outcome ended Linares' 13-fight win streak - which began after suffering back to back knockout losses. Those defeats led him to hire veteran coach Ismael Salas, who was not working the corner as he had a scheduling conflict - as he instead decided to train David Haye for last week's rematch against Tony Bellew at the O2 Arena in London.
At the time of the stoppage, the contest was on the table with a split draw.
Lomachenko was up by two points on one judge's card, Linares was up by two on another and one judge had it tied.
Linares gave praise to Lomachenko for landing that hard shot, but says he could have continued the contest and had no desire to see the contest end.
“He didn’t surprise me as I thought he was going to surprise me,” Linares said.
“The fight was getting interesting. It was very close, but he did surprise me with that body shot.
“I wanted to continue. I wanted to keep working, but the ref stopped the fight.”
2023-10-21 00:52:37
