1. We'll start with the obvious one, his power had Loma timid, and this is the reason that...

2. Loma started so late. He gave away at least the first 6 rounds of the fight imo. I'll say more about this below

3. Loma gets a lot of praise for his footwork, which is basically a pivot to end up opposite his opponent's power hand where Loma will then land shots. Lopez simply stepped around with him, like a partner dance. I saw Rigondeaux working on that in preparation for Loma, but he didn't execute it in the fight. Lopez did.

4. Loma uses excellent head movement in the form of leaning to his left or right to end up in your wheelhouse. When he did that, Lopez would simply push him off. This is where Lopez' naturally bigger size was especially helpful. The times Lopez didn't push him off, Loma simply got there and didn't let his hands go, likely afraid of Lopez' powerful counters.

5. Speaking of Lopez' counters, he had that short right uppercut to the body on tuck like a shank whenever Loma would get in too close.

6. (And this is according to the post fight press conference) Lopez saw early that Loma was trying to take him into deep waters and decided to remain composed and conserve his own energy while still remaining active. So by the time Loma decided to start turning it up, Lopez still had gas in the tank.




More on Loma starting late...
In reviewing the fight, neither of them landed much in round 7. I could see judges scoring that round either way, but I scored it a draw. I gave Loma rounds 8,9,10, and 11 due to him landing more shots and them being cleaner. He always lands shots that aren't necessarily eye-catching, but a landed shot is a landed shot. He actually stopped Linares with a shot that most people didn't even notice had landed until the replay. Round 12 was closer than advertised, imo, and I could also see it going either way, even though Lopez did appear to do damage near the end of it.
As for giving Loma round 2, he landed the cleaner shots. All Lopez landed was a body shot in the beginning of the round and perhaps a right to the side of Loma's head. Loma's left with about a minute to go and the the 3-pucnh combination near the very end of the round were the cleanest punches of the round, but maybe the judges didn't respect the lack of activity. I'm not mad at Andre for scoring it for Loma. But even if I give him round 2, that's only 5 clear rounds for him. The right guy won imo. Truth be told, I was disappointed in this performance from Loma. That was far too much waiting around in a fight for the undisputed label that he said was his dream accomplishment.

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Days like this I miss Sha Mecca