By Dan Ambrose: Former two division world champion Orlando Salido (43-13-4, 30 KOs) will be seeking his first win in the last 3 years when he fights next month against little known lightweight Amphon Suriyo (18-2, 14 KOs) in a 10 round fight in on May 27 in Bacum, Mexico, according to Dan Rafael. The U.S boxing fans can watch the Salido vs. Suriyo fight on beIN Sports Español.
The Salido-Suriyo fight will take place at catch-weight of 132lbs. Suriyo is a lightweight and Salido a super featherweight, which would explain the need for a catch-weight handicap for the fight Salido wants a rematch with Vasyl Lomachenko, who he beat 3 years ago by a 12 round split decision in 2014.
There was talk of a rematch between Salido and Lomachenko last year, but the money was said to be not there for the fight to make it worthwhile for Salido. I’m not sure if anything will change. Salido’s inactitivty and lack of wins 2014 isn’t going to help his negotiating position. Beating the little known 2nd tier fighter Suriyo probably won’t help either. Salido needs to fight actual names to help his negotiating strength. He might also want to choose more favorable venues to help increase his chances of getting decisions.
The 36-year-old Salido hasn’t fought since his bout against former WBC World super featherweight champion Francisco Vargas on June 4th last year. The fight was ruled a draw, but a lot of boxing fans still thought Salido did more than enough to deserve the decision. That was the second consecutive fight for Salido that ended a controversial 12 round draw.
In September 2015, Salido fought to a questionable 12 round draw against Roman “Rocky” Martinez in their rematch. Salido fought well enough to deserve a victory in that fight, but the judges scored it a draw. Salido really brings it with his all-out aggression, and constantly attacking style. Salido battered Vargas and Martinez in both of those fights, and appeared to do more than enough to rate the decision.
It’s unclear what the judges were watching for them to score those fights a draw, because Salido dominated most of the rounds. He really gave Martinez and Vargas beatings in those fights. Vargas looked like a shell of his former self in his one fight since then in getting stopped in the 11th round by Miguel Berchelt last January.
In looking at how depleted Vargas appeared in that fight, he did not look the same fighter that had gone to war with Salido last year. In Roman Martinez’s case, he was easily stopped by Lomachenko in the 5th round after fighting back to back matches against Salido in 2015. Martinez also looked like a shell of his former self.
Salido lost a controversial 12 round decision to Roman Martinez in their first fight in April 2015 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This writer had Salido winning that fight. The judges scored the close rounds to Martinez. There weren’t that many close rounds in the fight to be honest.
“The idea is to shake the rust off against Suriyo and if all goes well to fight Vasyl Lomachenko later in the year and settle things once and for all with that fight,” said Salido’s manager Sean Gibbons to ESPN.com.
Salido will likely need to move up to lightweight in order to fight Lomachenko a second time, because the Ukrainian champion will be moving up in weight soon seek out bigger fights against Mikey Garcia and Terry Flanagan. Lomachenko isn’t going to stay behind and continue to fight at super featherweight, because it’s a dead division with very few name fighters.
There’s no point in Lomachenko staying in the division because he already beat the best fighters – Jason Sosa, Nicholas Walters and Roman Martinez – and probably won’t get much attention if he beats Berchelt and Jezreel Corrales. Salido is a good option for Lomachenko, but the fight is not as interesting now given the lack of wins for Salido in the last 3 years. There are still a lot of boxing fans that would like to see Salido fight Lomachenko. It’s just not a fight that would further Lomachenko’s careers in a quantifiable way.
Salido is no longer a world champion, and he’s been inactive for 11 months. The only thing that Lomachenko gets from fighting Salido now is an opportunity to avenge his past loss to him. Lomachenko might not get much credit from the boxing fans if he beats Salido now, because he’s about to turn 37, and like I mentioned previously, he hasn’t won a fight since 2014. It doesn’t matter that all three of Salido’s last 3 matches have had controversial results.
Some boxing fans think Salido’s win over Lomachenko from 2014 was an undeserved one. They thought that Lomachenko did enough in rallying in the last 4 rounds to pull off the decision. The problem that Lomachenko had is he looked in distress from Salidos’s fierce body punching in the first 8 rounds, which caused him to clinch frequently to keep from getting hit. It looked like Lomachenko couldn’t handle the body shots from Salido, so he chose to clinch him every chance he could get.
Lomachenko was not ready for the kind of body attack that Salido gave him. Lomachenko used a lot of head movement in the fight, thinking that it would help him. It didn’t. Salido wasn’t interested in throwing head shots. Main focus was hitting Lomachenko to the body. No matter what Lomachenko tried to do, he couldn’t move his body out of the way of the shots that Salido was hitting him with. Some of Salido’s body shots strayed low at times, but mostly they were clean shots that had Lomachenko grabbing onto him. The fight was pretty one-sided through eight rounds. Salido had the fight won on my card after 8.
The only thing Lomachenko did was make it close by rallying a little at the tail end of the fight. There was also complaints from some boxing fans about Salido being heavier than Lomachenko in failing to make weight for the fight in coming in at 128 ¼ lbs. compared to Lomachenko’s 125 ¼ pounds. Salido being 3 pounds heavier than Lomachenko wasn’t the reason he won the fight. Salido was a better fighter with a professional fighting style.
“We believe the time is correct to make the Lomachenko fight,” Gibbons said. “Our goal is to fight May 27, have Orlando shake off the rust and have a deal in place with Top Rank for a Lomachenko fight.”
I don’t know how anxious Lomachenko is to fight Salido at this point in his career. The train may have left the depot already as far as Lomachenko is concerned. He’s moving up in weight towards bigger and better fights. Facing Salido right now is more like the last fight that Lomachenko had against non-champion Jason Sosa. It’s the same kind of fighter. In other words, Salido is a brawler just like Sosa was, but he’s an aging brawler, who hasn’t won a fight in 3 years. That’s a problem. If Lomachenko’s promoters at Top Rank want the fight with Salido badly enough, they’ll go ahead with it regardless of his lack of success recently. I just don’t know if Lomachenko will approve of the fight right now. He can do a lot more at lightweight and light welterweight right now than to get stuck facing Salido in a fight that is now stale.