By Dan Ambrose: In hindsight, Former WBO featherweight champion Juan Manuel Lopez (31-2, 28 KO’s) should have left well enough alone and been content with getting blasted out by tough Mexican Orlando Salido (38-11-2, 26 KO’s), because Lopez once again got stopped by him in a 10th round TKO loss moments ago on Saturday night at the Coliseo Roberto Clemente, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The 28-year-old Lopez’s once promising career is now in tatters after getting dropped in the 10th round. The fight was halted at :32 of the round. Lopez was hurt in the 5th, 6th, and 7th rounds from the stronger Salido. Although Lopez seemed to have a good round in the 8th, he still continued to take a lot of punishment.

Salido hit the deck in the 5th after hurting Lopez and pounding him. It was a really weird fight because Lopez only attempted to box initially before abandoning that effort and resorting to his old slugging tactics. You kind of can’t blame him because the crowd applause was really egging Lopez on and he couldn’t seem to resist trying to please them even when it was playing into Salido’s hands.

Lopez simply couldn’t handle the pressure that Salido was putting on him. When he did try to box, it wasn’t happening because Salido was so quick on his feet in cutting off the ring on him. Salido’s experience really showed itself and left Lopez with pretty much no choice but to try and beat Salido at his own game. It wasn’t going to happen, and you could see even early in the fight that Lopez was going to fall apart around the same time he did the last time he was stopped by Salido last April.

Lopez appeared to waste too much time trying to box Salido in the first six rounds of the fight and that cost him big time, because he fell behind in the fight and seemed to overdo it when he did finally start to make a surge in the 8th and 9th rounds. Lopez turned from the one that was being attacked to the attacker in both of those rounds. However, they took a lot out of Lopez due to the big shots he took. After the 9th round, Lopez just plopped in his stool and it seemed pretty obvious that he was going to get stopped in the 10th, and sure enough that’s what happened at the very beginning of the 10th.