By Dan Ambrose: Coming off of an 11-month layoff, an out of shape looking former 2 division world champion Orlando Salido (44-13-4, 31 KOs) stopped 36-year-old Colombian journeyman Aristides Perez (30-10-2, 16 KOs) after the 7th round of a scheduled 10 round fight last Saturday night at the Palenque de la Expo in Ciudad Obregon, in Sonora, Mexico.
Salido looked considerably heavier than Perez. It wouldn’t be surprising if Salido was close to 150 after rehydrating because he looked extremely heavy, slow and lethargic. This was not the Salido we’d seen in his past fights against Francisco Vargas and Roman Martinez. This was Salido that was suffering from ring rust and inactivity from the last 11 months. There are some fighters that do well when they’re out of the ring for a year or more at a time. Salido doesn’t seem to be one of them.
That was not one of Salido’s better efforts in his long 21-year-old boxing career. Salido looked heavy, slow and not in the best of shape compared to his last fight against Francisco Vargas 11 months ago in June 2016.
Perez decided he didn’t want to come out for the 8th round and he was promptly counted out by the referee after he chose to stay on his stool. Perez was fighting reasonably well in the 7th. It’s unclear why he decided to quit. Perez was even taunting Salido after getting hit with some hard left hooks to the head from him. Perez was shaking his head to let him know that he wasn’t hurt.
It wasn’t the type of one-sided round where you’d normally see a guy choose to quit on his stool the way that Perez did. Perhaps Perez was satisfied with him having some early success against Salido, and he might have felt that was enough of a victory for him to quit and be happy. Had the fight continued, Perez was almost surely going to be punished more and knocked out by Salido, because he was landing some hard shots to the head and body in the 7th that would suggest that the fight wasn’t going to go much longer.
Perez gave Salido some problems in the fight with his uppercuts that was landing. In the 3rd round, Perez stepped back and loaded up with a big right uppercut that caught the heavy-looking Salido clean on the jab, sending him down on the canvas. A badly hurt Salido got to his feet and immediately we down to a knee to try and shake off the shot. When Salido did get back up, he was staggering and still badly hurt. Perez tried to knock him out with some additional hard shots to the head, but he lacked the power to get him out of there.
In round 1, Salido hurt Perez almost immediately with a big right hand that sent him flying into the ropes. It was a one-sided round with Salido plodding forward very slowly and nailing the smaller and weaker Perez with big shots.
In the 3rd, Perez caught Salido with a scorching right uppercut that connected perfectly to the chin and sending him down. Salido came back in the last 30 seconds of the round to land some big shots of his own. The two fighters stood trading toe-to-toe in the last seconds of the round. Perez was against the ropes and firing back with hurtful shots each time Salido would hit him. Salido’s punches were a lot stronger due to his power and size advantage. Salido was fortunate that Perez wasn’t bigger, stronger and more talented, because he would have been in trouble if he’d been in the ring with someone like Miguel Berchelt, Takashi Miura or Vasyl Lomachenko. It took Salido too long to recover from being hurt by Perez. He would have almost surely been knocked out by someone with some power and/or talent.
Perez hit Salido well after the bell sounded to end the 4th. Salido wasn’t too happy about because it was at least 1 second after the bell had sounded. Salido had nailed Perez with 2 huge uppercuts with 35 seconds to go in the round. It was as if Salido was sending Perez a message with those uppercuts, because Perez had hurt him in the previous round with a right uppercut. Salido was flurrying on a trapped Perez as the round ended.
In round 5, Perez threw a desperate looking right hand that missed by a mile at the start of the round. Perez loaded up on that shot and it had knockout intentions written all over it. Perez was hoping that he could hurt Salido again like he’d done in the 3rd, but unfortunately it wasn’t happening. Salido was wise to the uppercuts that Perez was trying to hit him with, and he wasn’t going to come forward without jabbing his way in. Salido nailed Perez with a beautiful looping right hand followed by a left to the body that clearly troubled him.
Salido then started pouring on the punishment in nailing Perez with lefts to the body and rights to the head. Perez took the shots well, but he wasn’t able to fire back many of his own punches. When Perez would let his hands go, Salido would reach forward and hit him with body shots. The shots to the body seemed to hurt Perez a lot more than the punches to the head.
With a minute left in the round, Salido hurt Perez with a left to the head that almost knocked him down. The shot sent Perez falling against the ropes. Had the ropes not been there, Perez would have been knocked down. The referee gave Perez a big break by not scoring that as a knockdown because it should have been. The boxing fans at ringside got really excited at seeing Salido almost drop Perez, as they cheered loudly thinking the fight was able to be over.
At the start of the 6th, Perez hit Salido with a right to the back of the head that caused the referee to give him a stern warning. It was a pretty blatant foul on Perez’s part. It almost looked like he wanted out of the fight. When you foul someone like that, it’s a red flag that a fighter doesn’t want to be there. Salido dominated the round by punishing Perez against the ropes for almost the entire 3 minutes of the round.
Salido will need to take off some weight and get in much better condition if he’s to have a chance at beating WBO super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko later this year. Those two are expected to fight each other in a rematch. Salido beat Lomachenko by a 12 round split decision 3 years ago on March 1, 2014. Lomachenko’s boxing fans made a big deal about Salido coming in over the featherweight 126 pound limit in coming in at 128 ¼, and then rehydrating a great deal to have a big weight advantage over the Ukrainian fighter.
Lomachenko lost the fight because he wouldn’t handle the body shots from Salido. If Lomachenko didn’t want to fight someone that was heavier than him, then he should have pulled out of the fight. The fact that Lomachenko took it and lost left him and his boxing fans with no argument. Lomachenko took the fight and lost. That’s the end of the story. Lomachenko was lucky he wasn’t disqualified in the fight because he spent 12 rounds holding Salido nonstop. It was pure holding from Lomachenko, who couldn’t deal with the big body shots that Salido was constantly hitting him with.
Despite Lomachenko winning 2 gold medals in the Olympics for Ukraine, he had never fought many body punchers. Amateur boxing is pretty much all head hunting and it does a poor job of preparing a lot of fighters in getting ready for professional fighting, which is a completely different sport. Amateur boxing and professional boxing have about as much in common as game of chess or checkers. They’re entirely different. Lomachenko didn’t have any clue how to handle Salido’s body shots other than to hold him over and over again. Like I said, I think the referee should have disqualified Lomachenko for his excessive holding.