Boxing odds: Lomachenko massive favorite over Crolla

This Friday night (yes, Friday), ESPN presents their latest night of boxing when pound for pound king Vasyl Lomachenko faces Anthony Crolla live on ESPN+. Here are the latest odds for the match-up, courtesy of OddsShark:

Vasyl Lomachenko -10000
Anthony Crolla +1600

Those are some wide, wide odds, and understandably so. Lomachenko is the best in the world, a ridiculous technical specimen who has made a remarkable run in his short 5+ year pro career. Crolla for his part is a 34-6-3 veteran who is very popular in the UK. He’s on a 3 fight win streak that has him ranked as the #4 contender in the division by Ring, but prior to that he suffered back-to-back losses to Jorge Linares. Linares himself has a 2018 loss to Lomachenko, and a surprise blow-out loss in January, making Crolla’s losses to him look worse in retrospect.

All that said, the truth is, Lomachenko hasn’t been quite as dominant since moving up to Lightweight two fights ago. He was dropped by Linares before coming back to win, and looked merely “great” against Jose Pedraza, instead of “amazing!” Is that enough for me to pick Crolla here? No, certainly not. But I do think it’s fair to say Lightweight Lomachenko is not the unstoppable force of nature he was in the smaller weights. At some point that could come back to bite him, and if you want to take a little risk here, it certainly would pay off well for you if tonight’s the night.

Also on the card is Gilberto Ramirez at -5000 against Tommy Karpency at +1400. Nothing to see there.

Perhaps the weekend’s most intriguing fight is actually Saturday on Showtime with the biggest women’s fight in many years. There’s also a card on DAZN and FS1 Saturday - it’s a busy night for fight fans. Here are the odds for the rest of the weekend’s big fights:

Claressa Shields -300
Christina Hammer +230

Peter Quillin -265
Caleb Truax +205

Sergiy Derevyanchenko -1400
Jack Culcay +750

Jaime Munguia -5000
Dennis Hogan +1400