Juanma can’t afford to get whipped again by Salido

By Boxing News - 02/29/2012 - Comments

Image: Juanma can't afford to get whipped again by SalidoBy Dan Ambrose: Whatever Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is doing, he needs to make sure that his once promising fighter former WBO featherweight champion Juan Manuel Lopez (31-1, 28 KO’s) avoids taking another whipping from Orlando Salido (37-11-2, 25 KO’s) when they meet up next month on March 10th at the Coliseo Roberto Clemente in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Salido made Lopez look bad in beating him by an 8th round TKO last April in a fight where Lopez got beaten down from Salido with looping right hands that Lopez had absolutely no defense against throughout the fight. Man, did Lopez have no defense against those shots other than to block them with his head.

Maybe if Lopez could take the shots he might have won a decision despite getting dominated because the fight was held in his home country of Puerto Rico, and I never even considered the thought of Salido being able to walk out of that country with Lopez’s World Boxing Organization title in his possession if it went down to a judges’ decision.

A loss for the 28-year-old Lopez would be his 2nd defeat in his last three fights and a clear signal that he needs to make a major decision about his career as far as maybe hanging up the old gloves. If he can’t beat a tough guy like Salido, then it’s time to pack it in unless Arum has some tricks to get more mileage out of Lopez such as pulling the old steer around the best competition move or the strategic match against a paper champion that doesn’t have much in the way of talent.

Salido is going to be able to land his big punches in this fight because Lopez will be coming into this fight looking to settle a score from the last time he got spanked by Salido. Lopez’s head is going to be all messed up because he’ll be looking to prove himself and will do the exact wrong thing by looking to slug instead of playing a safety first fight and focusing on boxing Salido. All Lopez has to do is go the full 12 and the judges will likely hand him the decision unless he gets really whipped. Lopez can literally run for 12 rounds and I still see him getting the win, because he’s the home guy. But the problem is Lopez will have too much ego and will want to show his fans that he’s good enough to beat salido, and this will lead to him taking a vicious beating resulting in him getting stopped again.



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