Arum taking a risk by matching Lomachenko against Salido

By Boxing News - 02/13/2014 - Comments

lomachenko6By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is breaking character with his matching of Vasyl Lomachenko (1-0, 1 KO’s) against WBO featherweight champion Orlando Salido (40-12-2, 28 KO’s) on March 1st at the Alamodome, San Antonio, Texas, USA.

With the way that Arum has babied the career of Mikey Garcia by not putting him in any risky fights against the likes of Guillermo Rigondeaux and Yuriorkis Gamboa despite Garcia having 34 fights on his resume, why is Arum letting Lomachenko fight for a world title in his second fight of his pro career? Is there less for Arum to lose if Lomachenko gets beaten than it would be for him to have put Mikey Garcia in with Gamboa or Rigondeaux in his 2nd pro fight? It just seems more than a little odd to me that Arum is willing to let Lomachenko take a risky fight in his second pro fight of his career when Arum didn’t do the same thing for Mikey Garcia.

“He has had just one pro fight,” Salido said about Lomachenko. “My experience, strength and hunger will be the difference…He still has an amateur style that can be exploited. This is what I’m going to do on March 1.”

Lomachenko previously captured two gold medals in the Olympics for Ukraine. However, he didn’t look all that great in his first pro fight of his career last October in stopping Jose Ramirez in the 4th round. Lomachenko took a lot of shots in that fight, and he didn’t show much in the way of a work rate. It was just him looking to land occasional body shots. Had Ramirez been able to handle the body punches from Lomachenko, there would have been a good possibility that the Ukrainian would have ended up losing the fight.

Salido will be looking to take Lomachenko into the deep waters and drown him on March 1st. Lomachenko doesn’t have any experience in fighting beyond 4 rounds, and this is something that Salido can take advantage of.



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