by David P. Greisman

A win for junior welterweight prospect Sergey Lipinets over Lenny Zappavigna this coming Saturday would put him in position to fight for the International Boxing Federation’s world title.

They had been eyeing Eduard Troyanovsky. But Lipinets’ manager says he was not at all surprised that Troyanovsky lost the IBF belt last weekend in a one-round, one-punch knockout loss to Julius Indongo.

“I put my money on it,” Alex Vaysfeld told BoxingScene.com. “Troyanovsky had one thing going for him. He does possess huge punching power. I’ll give him that. But other than that, he had nothing. The worst thing is he never had a chin. [Another Vaysfeld fighter, Andrey] Klimov knocked him out when he was an amateur. It would’ve been a great showdown between Sergey and Troyanovsky. It wasn’t meant to be.”

Vaysfeld doesn’t give Indongo too much credit for the victory.

“Indongo is just a guy that actually got a chance to get to Troyanovsky. He has no chance against somebody like Sergey. No chance,” he said before rattling off a number of fighters Lipinets had beaten whom Vaysfeld considered better than Indongo.

“That is going to be an easier fight than Levan Ghvamichava, Walter Castillo and all these other guys,” Vaysfeld said. “All those guys that I just mentioned, they are great fighters. Those guys are really great fighters. They would give trouble to a lot of guys. If you try to match Castillo with a top fighter like [Antonio] Orozco or Frankie Gomez, they’re not going to fight him. Sergey took that fight. I think that Indongo, he’s just a one-hit wonder. He just got lucky. But that’s about it. Nothing else.”

Vaysfeld doesn’t expect that Lipinets will necessarily be next for Indongo, however. Now that Indongo has a title, he is also likely on the radar of Terence Crawford, the champion who has two world titles at 140 and wants the others.

“They’ll try to fight Crawford. They’re not going to be in a rush to fight Sergey,” he said. “But they do have a six-month period to fight a mandatory. We’re looking at a six-month period.”

Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com