By Dan Ambrose: Former world champion Orlando Salido (42-13-3, 29 KOs) still is unhappy about his fight against WBO super featherweight champion Roman “Rocky” Martinez (29-2-3, 17 KOs) being scored a 12 round draw last Saturday night in their rematch on Showtime pay-per-view at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The 34-year-old Salido felt that he clearly won enough rounds against the 32-year-old Martinez, who took a terrible beating from Salido in this fight and yet was still given a 12 round draw by the judges.
Patricia Morse Jarman scored the fight for Martinez, 115-113, Burt A. Clements scored it 115-113 for Salido, and Glenn Feldman had the fight scored a draw 114-114. Jarman’s score was the strangest of the three, because it’s impossible for me to watch the Martinez vs. Salido fight without seeing that Salido won at least 8 rounds of the fight.
I had him winning 9 rounds to three. The only rounds that I gave Martinez was rounds 3, 10 and 11. I didn’t give Martinez the 12th as the three judges had done because Salido clearly landed the better shots in the round, and was the one pushing the fight. But even if you did give Martinez the 12th, Salido still should have won the fight either 7 rounds to 5 or 8 rounds to 4.
“I really thought I dominated the fight last night and deserved the belt,” Salido said via Fightnews.com. “This is very disappointing after all these years. Everybody knows, but as usual, not the three that are supposed to know.”
Salido landed 285 of 1037 punches for a 27 percent connect percentage. For his part, Martinez landed 189 of 691 punch for a connect percentage of 27 percent. While Salido still has a small advantage in having landed close to 100 more punches than Martinez, the real difference between the two was in the harder puncher that Salido was consistently landing in the fight. Salido clearly landed the harder and cleaner shots throughout the fight.
You could hear the difference in power between the two fighters when they landed their blows, and Salido’s shots were much louder. How the judges could miss this with them being at ringside is unclear.
When seem poor scoring of a fight like this it just makes you feel that the Nevada State Athletic Commission needs to clean out it’s judging system by evaluating the judges and bringing in new people that can replace the judges that score fights poorly.
I’m sure that boxing fans don’t mind seeing a rematch between Salido and Martinez, but it’s not fair for a fighter like Salido to see his hard work unrewarded by him failing to get a win in a fight that he appeared to win.
“I did all the work and I thought I won the fight,” said Salido. “I thought the first couple of rounds were even but then I took control of the fight afterwards. I was definitely looking for the championship. As you all saw I threw more of the punches and I thought I won the fight. I dedicated so much for this fight, for them to take it away from me is not fair. Definitely, I am ready for a third fight!”
I thought the first couple of rounds weren’t really close rounds. Salido definitely won the first two rounds with his harder puncher and his aggressiveness. Martinez was trying to run around the ring to avoid getting hit by Salido, and there’s no way you could give Martinez those rounds due to him desperately trying not to get hit.
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