By Dan Ambrose: WBO featherweight champion Orlando Salido (40-12-2, 28 KO’s) will be making his first defense of his title against #5 WBO Vasyl Lomachenko (1-0, 1 KO’s) on March 1st at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, according to RingTV. Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is reporting that the fight is a done deal, and he’s trying to set up a rematch between former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. against Brian Vera.
Arum will be meeting with Chavez Jr. on Friday to see if he can get that fight signed. The Chavez Jr-Vera fight would obviously be the main event on the card with the Salido-Lomachenko fight being the co-feature.
Salido previously held the WBO featherweight title from 2011 until January of this year when he was beaten by Mikey Garcia by an 8 round technical decision. Mikey wasn’t able to hold onto the title for long, as he failed to make weight in his first title defense against Juan Manuel Lopez. The title then went vacant and Salido was able to recapture it by defeating Orlando Cruz by a 7th round stoppage last October.
Lomachenko, a two-time Olympic gold medalist from Ukraine, turned pro last October and stopped Jose Rivera in the 4th round.
This is a big step up for Lomachenko in facing Salido, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he loses this fight. I think lomachenko will need to fight a much different fight than he did against Rivera, because Salido can take a punch and he’s a lot more powerful than Rivera.
Chavez Jr. and Vera fought last September with Chavez Jr. winning a controversial 10 round unanimous decision in Carson, California. Vera out-worked a sluggish looking Chavez Jr., and appeared to have done enough to deserve the win. However, the judges saw it differently and gave Chavez Jr. the victory. After the fight, Chavez Jr. said he didn’t see any reason for needing to give Vera a rematch, but he soon changed his mind days later after seeing the huge amount of fans who saw his win as bogus.
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