By Ian S Palmer
Two veteran Mexican warriors will be meeting at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas this Saturday, December 9th when Orlando Salido takes on Miguel Roman. The 10-round super featherweight bout can be seen live in North America on HBO while fans in the UK can catch the action on Sky Sports Action and Sky Sports Main Event. Salido last fought in May when he stopped Aristides Perez after seven rounds while Roman was last in the ring in June when he stopped Nery Saguilan in the 12th round. This could be a candidate for fight of the year even though it’s a non-title bout.
Salido is a former four-time and two-division champion, but he’s now in the latter stages of his career as he’s 37-years-old. He’ll enter the ring with a deceiving record of 44-13-4 along with 31 Kos. He has just one win in his last four bouts along with a pair of draws and loss. The defeat came by 12-round unanimous decision to Roman Martinez and he then fought to a 12-round draw in a rematch before fighting to a 12-round draw with Francisco Vargas.
Salido is 5-feet-6-inches tall with a wingspan of 67 inches. He’s lost 13 fights and been stopped five times, including in his pro debut, but nobody’s been able to stop him since early in 1998. He’s faced numerous Grade A boxers during his career such as Vargas, Martinez, Juan Manuel Marquez, Mikey Garcia, Robert Guerrero, Yuriorkis Gamboa, Vasyl Lomachenko and Cristobal Cruz and met Lopez and Martinez twice each.
Salido has pretty good power even though his knockout ratio is just 50 per cent, but he also gets hit a lot and is no stranger to the canvas. However, he’s extremely hard to keep down. Salido is one of the smartest boxers around because he knows all of the tricks of the trade and if he can stand up to his opponent’s punching power he’s certainly a handful and quite hard to beat. He’s fought 426 rounds since turning pro in 1996 and has been the only man to beat Vasyl Lomachenko as a pro.
Roman is just 32 years old, but he’s already fought 69 bouts since turning pro at the age of 17 in 2003. Ironically, he has 426 rounds of experience under his belt, the exact same amount as Salido. He’s just an an inch shorter than Salido at 5-foot-5 and his reach is unlisted. Roman enters the contest with a record of 57-12 with 44 big Kos. He’s been stopped just twice in his 12 losses so has a great chin. He also has good power with a knockout ratio of 64 per cent.
Even though he’s been beaten 12 times, Roman has lost just twice in his last 20 bouts, which were to Takashi Miura by 12th-round stoppage in January and to Dante Jordan by 12-round unanimous decision in 2012. Roman’s also been beaten by Antonio DeMarco, Javier Fortuna, Jonathan Barros, Antonio Escalante, Miguel Beltran Jr., Fernando Beltran, Eduardo Escobedo, Jorge Solis, Genaro Garcia and Michael Domingo with DeMarco being the only other foe to stop him.
Roman has wins over Edgar Puerta, Ricardo Castillo, Daniel Ponce DeLeon, Juan Carlos Salgado, Cesar Soto and Tyrone Harris. Roman is a fine boxer who likes to mix things up, but he’s usually fallen just short when stepping up in class. Like Salido, he’s a fan-friendly boxer who likes to throw as many punches as possible and doesn’t mind taking a shot or two to land one of his own. Both guys aren’t afraid to go toe-to-toe and this has the potential to be a slugfest.
Prediction…
Roman is at his best when he can lure his opponent into a brawl and that’s probably his best bet here as Salido will oblige him. This should be an exciting fight, but a tough one to predict since both boxers are certainly capable of winning it. However, I think I’ll go with Salido in this one.
