Vasiliy Lomachenko evidently fought Teofimo Lopez with an injured right shoulder on Saturday in Las Vegas.
Yahoo! Sports is reporting that Lomachenko had surgery Monday night in Los Angeles to repair damage in the same area in which he had surgery after dislocating his shoulder against Jorge Linares in 2018.
Dr. Neal S. ElAttrache, Lomachenko’s surgeon, told Yahoo! Sports that Lomachenko had a “bruised rotator cuff and chipped a piece of cartilage” this time. ElAttrache said the left-handed fighter had difficulty throwing his right hook because of the injury.
Lomachenko should be able to resume training in January,
The now-former lightweight titleholder lost a unanimous decision to Lopez inside the MGM Grand “bubble.”
“When he came in from the Ukraine for his last stages of preparation for the fight, he was having some difficulty with the shoulder,” ElAttrache told Yahoo! Sports. “It turns out he had badly bruised the rotator cuff and chipped a piece of cartilage, which we didn’t realize at the time.
“But we knew he’d badly bruised the rotator cuff and badly bruised the bone where the rotator cuff attaches to the shoulder. That was roughly six weeks before the fight and we got him to where he was comfortable enough to train. He said he was able to train OK, but it continued to cause him pain during the fight.
“We operated on him last night and he had what we call a hemorrhagic thickened bursitis. That’s the tissue that lubricates and cushions the rotator cuff, which is where we had treated him and injected him before the fight.
“On the inside of the shoulder where he had previously dislocated the shoulder, he had chipped the cartilage on the inside of the socket. That was right next to the [previous] repair so I did a small touch-up of the repair so I could cover up the bare cartilage in the front of the shoulder.”
ElAttrache said he expects Lomachenko to make a full recovery.
“The things we did for him after the first surgery made him pain-free and his shoulder stable enough that he could go and win a couple of championships after that surgery,” ElAttrache said.
“I wouldn’t expect he’d have any limitation after this one for what we were able to do. Not all repeat surgeries have a worse prognosis.”
Bob Arum, Lomachenko’s promoter, said he didn’t know before the fight that Lomachenko was having problems with the shoulder.
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