By Jim Dower: Miguel ‘Siri’ Salido (44-13-4, 31 KOs) and Miguel ‘Mickey’ Roman (57-12, 44 KOs) both made weight on Friday for their 10 round fight this Saturday night on HBO Boxing After Dark. The Salido-Roman fight is going to be taking place at lightweight rather than their normal weight classes at super featherweight. This should be a real war for as long as it lasts.
(Photos Courtesy HBO/Ed Mulholland)
The telecast started at 10:20 ET/7:20pm PT. Salido weighed 131 pounds. Roman weighed 130.5 lbs. Salido looked a looked thinner than Roman. Roman, 32, is Salido’s replacement for WBC super featherweight champion Miguel Berchelt, who suffered an injury to his hand and couldn’t make the fight.
Salido, 37, plans on using the Roman fight at getting the rust out from a year’s worth of mostly inactivity and then going straight into a world title fight against Berchelt next year, as long as the WBC champion isn’t injured again.
Salido, 5’6”, looked more than 1 inch taller than the 5’5” Roman when the two were standing for the face off. There had to have been 2 inches difference between the two fighters.
Roman has more knockouts than Salido, but most of those wins have come against opponents and not quality fighters. Roman has faced a lot of bodies that have been fed to him to keep him busy during his career, and that’s helped pump up his record to far above what it would be if he were fighting good fighters.
Roman comes into Saturday’s fight with Salido having been knocked out recently in the 12th round by Takashi Miura. Roman is one of those guys that have had a failure to launch when it comes to his career. He should have fought for a world title many times during his career, but he’s not been matched up against good enough opponents to keep put him in position time and time again for world title shots.
When Roman did fight for a world titles on 2 occasions, he was beaten with ease by former WBA World featherweight champion Jonathan Victor Barros and Antonio Demarco. Those losses came in 2011 and 2012. Roman hasn’t fought for a world title since his 5th round knockout loss to DeMarco in March 2012.
Super featherweight contender Tevin Farmer (25-4-1, 5 KOs) weighed in at 129.5 pounds for his fight against Kenichi Ogawa (22-1, 17 KOs) for the vacant IBF World super featherweight title. Ogawa, 29, weighed in at 129.5 lbs.
Farmer, 27, comes into the fight with an 18-fight winning streak since his loss to Jose Pedraza in October 2012. Farmer was struggling at that point in his career. He was beaten by Kamil Laszcyk in 2012 as well, and Josh Bowles and Oscar Santana. These are all guys that Farmer would likely beat with ease now, but when he fought them, he hadn’t fully developed his game.
Ogawa’s only defeat on his resume is a 5th round knockout loss to Yuki Mayoshi in August 2012. Ogawa has won his last 14 fights. The only thing you can say about Ogawa’s winning streak is he accomplished it against weak opponents.
Former super featherweight Francisco Vargas (23-1-2, 17 KOs) weighed in at 130 lbs. for his fight against Stephen Smith (25-3, 15 KOs). For his part, the 32-year-old Smith also weighed at 130. This is another lightweight bout against guys that normally fight at super featherweight. This is a pretty important fight for both guys, because they cannot afford to lose right now. Smith lost last year to WBA World super featherweight champion Jason Sosa by a 12 round unanimous decision.
2 fights before that, Smith lost to IBF World super featherweight champion Jose Pedraza by a 12 round unanimous decision. You can argue that Smith didn’t deserve another world title shot against Sosa last year in November, but he got the fight anyway. Smith needs to show that he’s improved since those defeats. It’s hard for Smith to do that, because he’s fighting someone that is arguably better than Sosa and Pedraza in Francisco Vargas. Smith might not only lose to Vargas on Saturday, but he might get knocked out in the process by him.
If Smith gets stopped or beaten in a one-sided manner again, he might call it a day. His last 2 defeats have given him an indication that he might not have the talent to be a world class guy.
The 32-year-old Vargas lost his last fight to Berchelt by a 11th round knockout on January 28. That was a one-sided fight. Vargas looked like a shell of the fighter that had battled Salido to a controversial 12 round draw last year on June 4. Salido took something out of Vargas with that fight. He was not the same fighter that had battled Salido hard for 12 rounds. But it could be that Berchelt is that good of a quality guy that he made Vargas look that bad.
In other weights on the card, Dennis Shafikov weighed in at 130.5 lbs. for his fight with Rene Alvarado. For his part, Alvarado weighed in at 130.5 lbs. as well.
