Orlando Salido may need a KO to beat Juanma on March 10th

By Boxing News - 02/08/2012 - Comments

Image: Orlando Salido may need a KO to beat Juanma on March 10thBy Dan Ambrose: It’s never a good sign when you see a champion like WBO featherweight champ Orlando Salido (37-11-2, 25 KO’s) having to travel to his opponents’ home town to fight. Salido, 31, will be traveling to San Juan, Puerto Rico on March 10th to fight a rematch with Juan Manuel Lopez (31-1, 28 KO at the Coliseo Roberto Clemente.

Salido stopped the 28-year-old Lopez in the 8th round last April in a fight that took place in Lopez’s home country of Puerto Rico, and how Salido is going to be forced to do it again in front of another huge pro-Lopez crowd. I think if the fight goes to the card, Salido will be lucky if he only loses by rounds, and that’s not because he’ll get beat. It’s because it’s never easy to win decisions in other fighters’ home cities.

Fortunately for Salido, he’ll very likely take the crowd and the judges of this fight quite early by going toe-to-toe with Lopez and giving him another beating. It’s pretty obvious that Lopez is being given marching orders to avoid getting in any exchanges with Salido. He’s going to be told to box and move to ensure he doesn’t get clipped with any more of Salido’s big right hands like he did last time.

But I don’t think running will help Lopez, because he’s getting older and heavier now, and he’ll likely run out of gas if he’s forced to use a lot of movement. Lopez will do what he always does and that’s to try and slug it out. He won’t like being run around the ring and when his legs get tired, he’ll know it and will try and stand his ground to see if he can hurt Salido.

This will make things much easier for Salido to blast Lopez apart with right hands. This time, though, there probably won’t be a referee to step in and save Lopez by halting the fight. So, Lopez will probably hit the deck in this fight and will be badly beaten.



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