By Miguel Rivera

Jorge Linares (44-4, 27 KOs) is already making plans for his second fight of 2018.

Back on May 12 at New York's Madison Square Garden, Linares lost his WBA lightweight title in a highly anticipated fight with two-time Olympic gold medal winner Vasiliy Lomachenko (11-1, 9 KOs).

Lomachenko suffered his first knockdown in the sixth round and he had one of the toughest bouts of his career. But Lomachenko regrouped and stopped Linares in the tenth round with a good hook to the liver.

Now Linares is ready to get back in the mix, hoping to work his way back to another world title shot.

In a few days, he will travel over to Japan to sit down with his lead promoter, Mr. Honda of Teiken Promotions.

One of the other items he wants to resolve, is the training situation with longtime coach Ismael Salas.

Linares would like to continue forward with Salas, but he's not sure if the coach will be available.

Because of a scheduled conflict, with Salas training David Haye for his May 5 rematch with Tony Bellew, he was absent from Linares' camp for Lomachenko.

"I'm going to Japan on June 1, I'll start warming up there. I'll work with my brother Carlos and with Sendai Tanaka, under Teiken Promotions, while I calmly sit down with Mr. (Akihiko) Honda and see what's going to happen," Linares said.

"What's left of the year, I would like to sit down calmly with Ismael Salas again, but as you can see he's always busy, right now he's in Kazakhstan, I think he's training Beibut Shumenov because he's going to fight again, he's with Big Joe (Joe Joyce) from England and no one knows what can happen. From what I understand, it's because he signed a contract with Hayemaker [to work with Joyce].

"I would like to work with Ismael again because we gel very good together. He is an elite coach, a teacher, a sensei, a trainer who gels a lot with me as a boxer and not everyone has that. Let's see what happens, Jorge Capetillo has always been with me because he is in Vegas, and in Vegas is where I always do the physical preparation and I have everything there, even my own gym, so let's see what happens. The important thing is that we are doing well, that we are resting and then later on will come the important news."