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On Saturday night at the iconic Roberto Clemente Arena in the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico, two time World Featherweight champion Orlando Salido of Mexico once again stopped two weight world champion and big hitting Puerto Rican star Juan Manuel Lopez, this time in the 10th round to retain his WBO Featherweight title.
Prior to the bout, many fight fans and people within the trade tipped Lopez to regain the title that he had lost to Salido as he would be more focussed and better conditioned than he was in their first fight in Bayamon Puerto Rico, as Lopez had reportedly began the camp for their first fight weighing as heavily as 180lbs (12 stone 12lbs) and had to lose almost 4 stone just to make the Featherweight limit of 9 stone.
However the supposed weight trouble was not the only factor that was reportedly affecting the Puerto Rico star as he was in the midst of divorcing his wife and former long term partner Barbara DeJesus prior to the first fight with Salido and he was reportedly having to regularly leave his training camp to attend the divorce proceedings.
Their first fight, which was widely regarded as a fight of the year candidate back in 2011, saw Salido drop Lopez in the fifth round of the fight and for the second time in Lopez’s career having previously being dropped by Filipino contender Bernabe Concepcion.
Salido recovered and eventually succeeded in stopping Lopez three rounds later in a contest where all three judges,Tom Miller, Lisa Giampa, and Jose Roberto Torres had them locked together at 66-66 apiece.
Prior to the eighth round stoppage of Lopez, who was still on his feet when the referee Roberto Ramirez Jnr stopped the action with Lopez backed up against the ropes which caused rioting within the overwhelmingly pro-Lopez crowd and saw objects being thrown into the ring and even saw a water bottle hit the Showtime commentator Al Bernstein on the back of the head while live on air.
Fast forward eight months later and both men were facing off against each other, with Lopez scoring some success but seemed to wage a more tactical and cagey fight, instead of the powerful free swinging big hitter that has made him such a crowd favourite.
Salido calmly counter punched, picking his shots effectively and was regularly forcing Lopez to retreat; were all of the wars that Lopez had previously been in starting to take their toll ?
In the fourth round, Lopez was starting to land more effectively against Salido but was getting outworked and had thrown an elbow during the fight and in the fifth was scoring more punches but was simply not using enough angles when Salido was coming straight at him.
However, Salido succeeded in rocking Lopez toward the end of the round when he backed Lopez up with some good bodywork until Salido ended up getting dropped but saved by the bell as the knock down came too late for Lopez to fully capitalise.
The knockdown had succeeded in getting the crowd on their feet and showed to everyone that Lopez got his machismo back. In the sixth round, Lopez was starting to get more shots through but still Salido jumped on him and dominated the sixth round by scoring effectively to the head and body, landing twice the power shots that Lopez was throwing.
In the seventh Salido was keeping Lopez on the ropes and landing left hooks on Lopez’s jaw as Lopez was too upright at times when he was being backed up.
In this round Salido succeeded twice in backing Lopez into the corners of the ring but he was unable to fully capitalise as Lopez used his slightly superior footwork to get out of the tight spots he found himself in after Salido scored effective to his body and matched him in the exchanges towards the end of the frame to give him the round on this writer’s scorecard.
In the eighth round Salido continued to outland Lopez at his 2 to 1 rate throughout the fight however ended up being backed onto the ropes but was still able to effectively counterpunch Lopez despite being in such a perilous situation.
Lopez even had Salido pinned in a corner but still Salido fired back, refusing to tie up on the inside to buy time, and they continued to exchange right to the bell to mark the end of the eighth round.
The following round saw both men going mano-a-mano in the manner that is often been seen in the ring rivalry between Mexico and Puerto Rico wth Lopez once again backing up Salido, but still Salido was countering Lopez effectively despite swelling around both his eyes and still they hammered away at each other on the inside right up to the bell marking the end of the round which has laid out a marker for being round of the year.
In the tenth round, Salido set Lopez with a jab before stunning Lopez with a right to the body and then landing a three punch combination to drop Lopez to the canvas.
Lopez staggered to his feet, wobbling, forcing referee Roberto Ramirez Snr to stop the contest 32 seconds into the round as Salido retains his title in a very good stoppage as Lopez looked like he nothing left.
In the post fight interview with Showtime, Lopez reportedly accused referee Roberto Ramirez Snr of having a gambling problem and had stated that he had notified the governing body in Puerto Rico in the past of this.
In the eyes of this writer, there was nothing suspicious about the stoppage whatsoever as Lopez wobbled briefly when he got to his feet and almost fell forward, a clear sign that he was no longer able to defend himself. He has since apologised for the remarks toward the highly thought of Ramirez.
So what next for both men:
For both Salido and Lopez, it shall be a rest to recover and for Lopez he will need to rebuild his confidence and re-evaluate his fighting style if he wants to remain a relevant force and will need a couple of 10 round fights to rebuild his dented confidence.
For Salido, possible targets could be Daniel Ponce DeLeon or Miguel Angel Garcia, who featured on the undercard with a dominate stoppage win over Bernabe Concepcion and showed why he has been one of the most talked about prospects.
We wait to see what will happen among the Featherweights.
