Hurry Home Early: A Lightweight Champ Warren Would Wanna See

In the end, after the punches, there is only talk. Maybe it's not aloud. Maybe it's entirely in your head or conducted between you and strangers via electronic messaging.

Just talk about what happened because the happening is over. No matter how many times it's seen or parsed, it's ended. Can't from any angle, device, download be re-entered -- not sufficiently.

So we talk -- in the only two ways available to us: reactions to what was, projections of what could be.

In taking down Linares, Lomachenko counterintuitively showed he won't be able to carry his power beyond 135. His end-stage KO, after endless neon-freon combinations that would've felled smaller men, betrayed the outer boundary.

(Ringside, I felt those mesmeric punch multiples were "wind-blown twirling lawn pinwheels" -- a tad purple, sure.)

Lomachenko has that in common with Adrien Broner -- of all people -- the 135-lb. weight line. It speaks to the humbling nature of boxing -- when it's not being gamed by juicers -- that such dissimilar dudes can be lumped together.

We talk about what could be: Against bigger men, Loma's right-jab won't bust up eye sockets. His mercurial footwork --the way he seems to levitate around a guy -- only to jet forward the second he sees an opening, like a Silver Surfer without need of a hoverboard -- will make him more nuisance than menace.

And on the return end, he'll take straight rights similar to the one Linares threw -- only they'll be even harder and possibly damaging.

What if young and yoked Tank Davis does the dirty work? Or 1-2 artist Mikey Garcia?

If you're reading this wondering why I'm not praising Linares' performance, it's because anyone this far in already knows how impressively he showed out, exceeding the expectations he can blame only himself for setting in outings against merely-decent pugs -- Gesta, Campbell, Crolla...

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