By Dan Ambrose: WBO featherweight champion Orlando Salido (39-11-2, 27 KO’s) defends his title on January 19th on HBO against unbeaten challenger Miguel “Mikey” Garcia (30-0, 26 KO’s) at Madison Square Garden in New York.

This is one of those fights that could literally go either way because not much is known about the talent level of Garcia because he’s such poor opposition during most of his career all the way up to this fight.

Garcia has just been matched too carefully, and he’s been able to score knockouts over guys that a lot of fighters would, so you really don’t know how good or not so good he is.

Salido, 32, has always been a very good fighter, but he’s had bad luck that when he did fight for titles he’d face someone really good like Juan Manuel Marquez or Yuriorkis Gamboa, and he couldn’t beat those guy, although he did give them a lot of problems. Salido beat Cristobal Cruz in May 2010 to win the IBF featherweight title. However, he lost the title in his next fight against Gamboa.

It wasn’t until he faced WBO featherweight champion Juan Manuel Lopez in 2011 that Salido was able to get his act together and win a title and hold onto it. Salido beat Lopez in a rematch by a stoppage and has defended the title four times successfully. Garcia is going to be a real test for Salido, because he can really punch and he does a lot of things well.

Another big fight on this card is WBA World middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (24-0, 21 KO’s) making a defense of his title against the tough Gabriel Rosado (21-5, 13 KO’s). This isn’t the ideal fight that Golovkin was looking for but it’ll have to do for now. Golovkin wants to fight the top guys like Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Sergio Martinez, but getting them in the ring isn’t an easy thing to do.

Golovkin has to build up his name a little more by fighting in the U.S more often because he’s really just now starting to get known by boxing fans. It takes a while before a fighter gets a name for himself and I don’t think Chavez Jr., Martinez, or Daniel Geale will agree to fight him until he’s built up more of a name for himself.

In undercard fights:
Mikael Zewski vs. Brandon Hoskins
Roman Martinez vs. Juan Carlos Burgos