By Dan Ambrose: WBO super featherweight champion Roman “Rocky” Martinez (29-2-3, 17 KOs) will be defending his WBO title in a third fight against 35-year-old #2 WBO Orlando Salido (43-13-3, 30 KOs) on February 20th at a still to be determined venue.
Salido and Martinez fought to a highly controversial 12 round draw on September 12th of this year on the undercard of the Floyd Mayweather Jr vs. Andre Berto card from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Salido appeared to win the fight in the eyes of many boxing fans, but the three judges scored the fight 115-113 for Salido, 115-113 for Martinez, and 114-114.
I had the fight scored clearly in Salido’s favor in him winning 8 rounds to 4. No way did I see Martinez doing enough to win the fight. I thought Martinez did a good job taking head shots and absorbing punishment in the fight, but he didn’t deserve a draw just because of his ability to take punishment.
Salido has found himself on the short end of the stick in both of his fights with Martinez, as he also lost a 12 round unanimous decision to him in April 2015 in a fight that took place in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Salido was dropped twice in that fight, and docked a point late in the fight in the 11th round for hitting Martinez low.
While it’s nice that the two fighters are facing each other again, you have to wonder whether Salido can get a win over Martinez without knocking him out. The series should be 1-1 right now instead 0-1-1, because Salido clearly beat Martinez last September. That was such a terrible beaten for most of the fight that you have to wonder why Martinez’s trainer didn’t throw in the towel. Martinez took a horrible beating for 8 rounds. He had 4 decent rounds in the fight, but the rest fight was all Salido.
“We just need to work out the site and TV is still in the works,” said Salido’s manager Sean Gibbons to ESPN.com.
Gibbons wants the fight to take place in Mexico or America. Martinez wants the fight to take place in Puerto Rico. As controversial as the second fight was, it would be difficult to imagine Salido agreeing to fight Martinez in Puerto Rico. The scoring for the second fight was just baffling to the point where it’s surprising that the World Boxing Organization didn’t make the fight a no contest, because that just a very strangled scored fight. The fight was closer to a 9 to 3 score in my view than an even fight.
Salido treated Martinez like a punching bag for most of the fight, and it was too one-sided to be really entertaining. Martinez came back a little at the end of the fight, but he had given up so many rounds that I saw it as mathematically impossible for him to win.
Instead of seeing a third fight between Salido and Martinez, I’d rather see the two fighters face other opponents. I’d like to see Salido fight some of the better super featherweights than Martinez like Takashi Uchiyama, Nicholas Walters, Rances Barthelemy, Francisco Vargas or Javier Fortuna.
As for Martinez, he should fight one of those guys too. What we don’t want to see is Salido and Martinez fighting each other over and over again simply because of controversial scoring by judges. If the judges can’t get the scoring right, then the fighters need to move on.
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