By Bill Phanco: Former WBO featherweight champion Orlando Salido (39-12-2, 27 KO’s) will be opting to move up to super featherweight to go after a title in that weight class against WBO super featherweight champion Roman “Rocky” Martinez in September, according to fightnews.com. Salido, 32, wants to fight a 10 round bout in May against a still to be determined opponent in Mexico, and then from there move on to face Martinez for the World Boxing Organization super featherweight title.
The fact that Salido is moving up in weight to go after one of the titles in that weight class suggests that Salido isn’t going to bother looking to getting a rematch against Mikey Garcia, who defeated Salido by an 8th round technical decision last Saturday night to take his WBO title.
Salido said this about the Mikey fight as quoted by Fightnews.com “I was going to dominate [Mikey] him in the last few rounds. I felt that his performance was going down.”
Mikey suffered a broken nose on an accidental head-butt in the 8th round and this caused the fight to be stopped.
As far as whether Mikey would have won the fight had it gone the last four rounds, this is kind of a controversial thing where Mikey’s fans felt that he was going to be able to hold firm and either box his way to a decision or get a stoppage. However, there are a number of fans who saw that Mikey was starting to get hit more and more in the 7th and 8th rounds, and Salido was taking him into uncharted waters. Mikey was clinching more frequently and running a lot more in the 7th and 8th rounds. He was getting warned about the clinching and about his habit of punching Salido’s head down towards the canvas when he would come in looking to land his punches.
Mikey wasn’t exactly looking solid like he been earlier in the fight when he knocked Salido down four times in the first four rounds. It looked like Salido was on the comeback, and at the very least he was going to wear Mikey out and make him look despite and worried with his clinching, pushing down on his head and running.
I think Mikey would have increased those three tactics in the last four rounds to the point where he was no longer looking impressive but instead looking desperate. Mikey wasn’t shining in the 7th and 8th, and the head-butt came right in time to save him a lot of punishment and perhaps some embarrassment as well.