“He said he’d do this and that. In the end, he just quit.”
—WBO super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko, after making Nicholas Walters lose his mind Saturday night at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas
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In other words, he huffed and he puffed and didn’t blow shit down. He “quit,” the ultimate 4-letter word in all of sports, but none moreso than in the beleaguered sport of boxing.
After a spectacular ringwalk that evoked Bob Marley, Walters decided to go Usain Bolt after 7 rounds, quiting in front of roughly 3,000 fans on hand (including many of his peers) and untold thousands watching on HBO.
In a weird irony, the former Jamaican badass (with ties to Panama) had become a Panamanian version of Roberto Duran, quietly screaming “No mas mon” in a way that made it seem as if Duran went the distance with Sugar Ray Leonard in their infamous rematch.
He didn’t already beat Lomachenko as Duran had Leonard, and wasn’t pressured into an immediate superfight rematch, all while bloated and dealing with real political upheaval as did Duran.
In the eyes of those who comprise of the reggae/hip-hop community that constituted his fanbase across the globe, he’d become Nicholas “The Assman” Walters and the world’s first “Lomo”. That may not be fair (or even biased and cruel), but we are now living in an aggressive new world with Donald Trump as personality cult leader, so it is H ard to imagine Walters (or perhaps, boxing itself) shaking a distinction far worse than that of a “Pactard” or “Flomo,” politically incorrect terms of disendearment for fans against Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather.
Because those two terrible factions existed, boxing has stayed alive. But what Walters did on Saturday night helped no fanbase, unless maybe you’re thinking of MMA’s.
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“Ultimately, if you aspire to greatness, you have to assume risk, take chances and be the fighter willing to take the game winning shot every round. If you’re not that fighter, then you’re not the right fighter for us.”
—-Peter Nelson, Executive VP of HBO Sports
Nelson, like so many of us in the boxing world, believed Walters would dare to be great against the rare talent of Lomachenko. The same network that saw Pacquiao as the past, thought Walters could help carry boxing into the “Hi-Tech” future.
Told you all that this was a ‘Can’t miss’ fight that Lomachenko would win ‘in eight amazing rounds.’
I’m embarrassed. If Walters had the will of Andre Ward against Sergey Kovalev, then the worst that can happen is defeat to a classical music version of Gennady Golovkin.
No one would blame him for not being able to dance against a fighter who has no discernable rhythm. But to tie both shoes together in the middle of a dance you begged for? One you said you’d die for, that we were all dying to see? If something is too good to be true– then its probably too good to be legal, and today, the public has every right to try and convict him for crimes against boxing humanity.
He quit.
