Boxing Virtuoso Vasyl Lomachenko Might Really Be Inside the Matrix

Vasyl Lomachenko is in The Matrix. 

That's the premise posited in a YouTube video that spread across the boxing internet this summer. Despite being absurd on its face, it begs some serious reflection.

Maybe it's the vast experience gained in 397 amateur fights (396 were victories), maybe it's a gift from God, and maybe it's advanced computer programming—but watching the clip, it's easy to believe that Lomachenko (6-1, 4 KOs) really does slow down time. Throughout, he's not just one step ahead; he's two, dipping, dodging and sidestepping punches while preparing a response of his own.

Even better, for boxing fans, you don't need to do much editing work to put together a Lomachenko highlight package. Almost every minute of nearly every round, even against top-flight competition, he manages to do something remarkable, something so beautiful that you can easily forget you're watching a blood sport, lost in the elegant artistry of a true virtuoso. 

"I think the boxing game is one that people have forgotten about and they are not enjoying it as much," Lomachenko, 28, told a select group of reporters on a media call this week. "I want to bring back and show how interesting boxing can be. I am the motherboard."

The punch line is delivered by his manager and translator Egis Klimas with a belly laugh. But it's kidding on the square. This is what defensive boxing is supposed to look like. This is what Floyd Mayweather Jr seemingly forgot in the latter stages of his career.

Yes, the sport is about avoiding being hit—but it's also about striking in return. And no one in the modern sport combines the two quite like the great Lomachenko. 

"Vasyl Lomachenko is technically the best fighter that I have seen since the early Muhammad Ali," promoter Bob Arum told the press. "There is nobody that I have seen, and there have been a lot of great technical fighters that I have seen—Alexis Arguello was one, Floyd Mayweather, certainly, Manny Pacquiao—but there has been nobody with the skills that Vasyl Lomachenko has."

Chris Carlson/Associated Press

Arum is responsible for Lomachenko's career, and his bottom line depends on selling his fight with the hard-hitting Nicholas Walters (26-0-1, 21 KOs) on Saturday night at 10:35 p.m. ET on HBO. It's Arum's 2,000th career event, and he'd tell the world I was the next Ali if he thought it would make him a buck.

After all, he's a boxing promoter, and that's what boxing promoters do.

This time, however, something about the hyperbole rings true. Watching Lomachenko fight is a hardcore fan's dream come true. Hipster boxing fans often talk about the pure joy they find in footwork, the shuffling dance of high boots across the canvas. For once, it's easy to join them in their simple pleasures.

Lomachenko moves in a way that doesn't seem humanly possible, backing down his opponent with careful precision and then, somehow defying all laws of time and space, suddenly sidestepping to find the perfect angle to deliver a barrage of punches. It's violence, sure. But it's the most refined violence you're likely to find in this cruel world.

"I would like you to know that everything that I have is what my father (famed Ukrainian trainer Anatoly Lomachenko) created in me and my father put everything together into me," Lomachenko said. "I am a workaholic. I work hard. I do not cheat myself in training. I work very hard and somehow God has given me great balance that helps me put everything together." 

At a stage of his career when most top fighters are just venturing into 10-round fights for the first time, Lomachenko has already won world titles in two weight classes and made his way onto the Ring magazine's prestigious pound-for-pound list.

Many boxers spend their careers doing all they can to avoid a fight, building an impressive-looking but hollow record against carefully selected patsies. Lomachenko, twice an Olympic champion, wanted no part of that paradigm as he joined the professional ranks. Instead, he insisted on being matched hard from the jump.

"He doesn't want any gimmes. He wants every fight to be a challenge," Arum said. "So at 130 pounds, who is more of a challenge than Nicholas Walters? I am not going to slow him down. He knows his ability a lot more than I do." 

Lomachenko's first professional bout was a 10-round affair, his second a title fight against scrappy veteran Orlando Salido. That proved a bridge too far, as Salido provided an early introduction to the ugly side of the sport, coming in overweight and then employing every dirty trick he'd picked up in 55 professional fights to stymie the young prodigy. 

While Lomachenko recovered smartly, handing the slick Gary Russell Jr. his first loss in his next fight, signs he was human after all give opponents like Walters hope.

"Even Muhammad Ali lost fights," Walters said. "I don't think this is a different Lomachenko from the guy that lost to Salido. He is the same Lomachenko. They say a leopard cannot change his spots, right? He can be as technical all he wants, but I am in the hurt business. This is a gladiator sport and I fight all of my fights like that. I fight like a gladiator."

Walters will be Lomachenko's toughest opponent yet. He's athletic, hard-punching and hard-nosed, the kind of fighter a savvier champion would do all he can to avoid. That's what the rest of the sport has done since he leaped onto the world scene with a devastating knockout win over Nonito Donaire in 2014. 

But you don't go down among the greatest of all time or earn Arum's comparisons to Ali by avoiding the best fighters and the toughest fights. Lomachenko has chosen his path. It's a hard one, ending in Canastota, New York. 

No pressure, right?

"It will give me another motivation because a lot of people may look at that or hear that and think that maybe it's not true," Lomachenko said. "When I hear (Arum's compliments) it gives me a lot of motivation to make me work harder in my training to prove what Bob is saying. I don't have the chance to make any mistakes. I have to prove that Bob is right."

Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.