Floyd Mayweather Downplays Vasiliy Lomachenko Following Loss To Teofimo Lopez

Floyd Mayweather believes Vasiliy Lomachenko cannot be compared to himself or any of the other greats in boxing.

Lomachenko suffered a unanimous decision loss to Teofimo Lopez in their highly-anticipated lightweight title unification fight this past weekend.

As a result, he lost for the second time in his professional career and also fell in the pound-for-pound rankings.

And while discussing Gervonta Davis‘ upcoming fight in a recent interview, Mayweather — who Lomachenko has been compared to in the past — made it a point to downplay the Ukrainian’s skills.

“I didn’t have to have 500 amateur fights and he does something that I wasn’t able to do. He was able to win two gold medals, which is a huge accomplishment,” Mayweather told Showtime Boxing. “Just to go to the Olympics is huge in itself. They say, ‘guess what? He was the quickest to win a world title than any other fighter.’ Man, once you fight 300 amateur fights, you’re a professional anyway.

“You cannot compare a fighter like Loma to me or a fighter like [Muhammad] Ali or a fighter like Sugar Ray Leonard. You know the reason why? We won our first fight. We won our second fight and we won our third fight.”

Mayweather, of course, is referring to the fact that Lomachenko lost his second professional fight — albeit controversially — to Orlando Salido in a split decision defeat back in 2014.

That said, Mayweather is taking nothing away from Lopez’s accomplishment. However, he does make it a point to add that Salido was far from being the best in the world.

“So I’m not going to take anything from Teofimo for what he did the other day, but remember, this guy [Lomachenko] already had a loss to Salido,” Mayweather added. “Salido wasn’t the best guy in the world. He was solid, and he won a title before, but he wasn’t the best guy in the world.”

What do you make of Mayweather’s comments?