By Eric Thomas: After 29 fights, unbeaten welterweight prospect Dmitry Salita (28-0-1, 16 KOs) is still trying to find his way to top level opposition. Last Thursday’s bout with Fabian Luque (21-7-4, 12 KOs), who Salita stopped in the 5th round of a scheduled 10-round bout at the Roseland Ballroom, in New York City, New York, will hopefully bring the 25 year-old Salita closer to eventually taking on a top tier fighter, if not at least a B-level opponent. Salita, originally from Ukraine and now living in Brooklyn, New York, showed excellent speed and power in the process of knocking down Luque, 30, twice en route to stopping him in the 5th round.
However, Salita’s defense was no where, as he was easily hit with flush right hands by Loque. Worse, however, was that many of the shots that Salita was hit with where telegraphed punches from Loque, who threw long and slow shots that Salita should have been able to pick up or duck. He didn’t, rarely getting out of the way of the few shots that Loque attempted. In the first round, Salita knocked Loque down with a superb right hand in the last seconds of the round. Judging from this shot, and some of the others that Salita landed in the round, he has major power for a welterweight.
He also showed good foot movement, as he moved around nimbly on his feet looking for openings. As I mentioned earlier, however, his defense was atrocious. Loque was able to clock him a few times in the first round and it looked bad, considering that Loque isn’t anywhere near a top level fighter in my estimation.
Salita was cut over his left eye in the third after catching an forearm from Loque. Salita fought well in the round, landing especially hard shots to the body of Loque. Salita received a warning for low blow from the referee. As if to pay him back, Loque almost immediately landed a low blow of his own, which caused the referee to stop the action and warn both fighters to clean it up.
At the start of the 4th round, Salita dropped Loque with huge right hand seconds into the round. At that moment, he looked like a smaller version of Kelly Pavlik, in that both his form and power seemed identical to Pavlik. However, Salita quickly messed things up by throwing another low blow, thus causing the referee to deduct a point from him.
In the 5th round, Salita was landing combinations and hitting Loque very hard each time. After landing one particularly hard left-right combo, the fight was stopped by the ringside doctor at 0:45 of the 5th round.