By Bill Phanco: Orlando Salido may have been fighting with right broken orbital bone from the 1st round in his 8th round technical decision loss to Mikey Garcia last Saturday night. Salido’s manager Sean Gibbons has confirmed with espn that Salido broke his orbital bone in the fight. The fight was stopped after the 8th round because Garcia broke his nose from an accidental head-clash with Salido during the 8th. The judges gave Garcia the victory by the scores 79-70, 79-69 and 79-69.
Salido got off to a terrible start in that fight, getting knocked down twice in the 1st round, once in the 3rd and once in the 4th. Salido never seemed to get his bearings right after the two first round knockdowns, however. Those were really hard shots and it was surprising that Salido was able to make it out of the round. He walked into the first shot, a hard left hook, and he never saw the punch coming. Moments later, Salido was knocked down again by a left hook.
Salido did start to fight a lot better after the 6th and he seemed to have a better idea how to avoid Garcia’s left hooks and short right hands. However, his right eye was badly swollen and closing fast at the time the fight was stopped in the 8th. Salido would have been lucky if he could have gone another two rounds without his right eye closing completely.
In hindsight, Salido needed to keep his guard high to protect against Mikey’s left hooks because those seemed to be the ones that were doing most of the damage. He did a lot better job of blocking those shots after the 6th, but part of that seemed to because Mikey was starting to tire a little from the fast pace. Mikey didn’t look like he was used to fighting this fast and this far into the fight because most of his bouts had been mismatches against weak opposition before this fight.
It doesn’t appear that Gibbons will be looking to put Salido back in with Garcia, as Salido will be fighting at super featherweight for his next fight in May. After that he hopes to get a title shot against WBO super featherweight champion Roman “Rocky” Martinez in September.