Orlando Salido rejects $720K offer for Lomachenko fight

Boxingnews24.com

By Dan Ambrose: WBO super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko is fighting the recently beaten featherweight Miguel Marriaga on August 5 instead of a rematch with Orlando Salido (44-13-4, 31 KOs), because the Mexican star turned down an offer of $720,000 for the fight with Lomachenko. At least that’s the story from ESPN.

Salido, 36, apparently wasn’t happy with the $720K offered by Top Rank. There’s no word how much Lomachenko would have received for the fight. If he was getting a much bigger payday than Salido, then it’s understandable why he would reject an offer of $720,000. We also don’t know what Salido is making for most of his fights. If he’s getting close to a half a million per fight, then why take a fight with Lomachenko if it’s just going to give him a small amount more than that? It doesn’t make sense. Top Rank might need to come up with the deal sweetener if they want Salido to agree to the fight with Lomachenko. It shouldn’t be a big deal for them if they want Salido badly enough.

Getting Salido to agree to a fight with Lomachenko might require Top Rank to bump up their offer of $720,000 to as high as $1 million. They have to ask the question whether they want their Lomachenko to avenge the loss to Salido badly enough for them to pay to get him to agree to the fight. It’s a simple question. If Top Rank needs their fighter Lomachenko to beat Salido in a rematch in order to validate his career in the eyes of the boxing fans, then they’ll give Salido his asking price.

If they’re OK with Lomachenko’s loss, then they need to move on and forget about Salido. Personally, I think the train has left the station. The loss has happened already for Lomachenko. Fighting Salido at this point won’t prove anything because he’s now 36, and has aged since he whipped Lomachenko in 2014. You don’t prove anything now if you’re Lomachenko in beating an old fighter.

It would be the same thing if Lomachenko got old and some younger guy beat him in his old age. Would the younger guy get full credit? No, he wouldn’t. The only boxing fans that would give the fighter credit would be the casual fans, who wouldn’t be aware that Lomachenko got old. It’s too late for Lomachenko to fight Salido now. The loss happened, and Salido is now old. Lomachenko just needs to learn from the defeat, and accept that he couldn’t handle getting hit hard to the body.

Lomachenko will be fighting Marriaga at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, California.

Lomachenko vs. Marriaga is a waste of time. The 30-year-old Marriaga just lost his last fight to WBO World featherweight champion Oscar Valdez on April 22 in losing a 12 round decision. If Top Rank wanted to find a good opponent for Lomachenko to fight, they should have taken Valdez and matched him against the former Ukrainian 2-time Olympic gold medalist instead of putting him in with the guy that was just beaten by Valdez. What makes the Lomachenko-Marriaga fight look even worse is Marriaga was recently beaten by Lomachenko victim Nicholas Walters by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision in 2015.

Top Rank might as well put Walters back in with Lomachenko for a needless rematch rather than matching the recently twice beaten Marriaga against him. The good news for the boxing fans is Lomachenko-Marriaga is on ESPN Boxing, because I think it would be awful fight for even regular HBO. If the idea is to put Lomachenko in against marginal oposoition, then Top Rank is succeeding at that. But if they want to put Lomachenko against the best, they’re doing well in selecting fighters coming off defeats like Marriaga to feed to Lomachenko.

“When the financial requests were met suddenly there were other issues like a hand problem, which led to a weight problem, which led to Marriaga. Funny how that happens,”said Top Rank president Carl Moretti to ESPN.com. ”So we moved on to trying to secure the best possible opponent at the time, and Miguel Marriaga stepped up to the plate.”

It must bother Lomachenko and Top Rank that Salido beat them in 2014. Salido was the better fighter. He exposed Lomachenko by showing that he can’t take body shots. Lomachenko’s opponents since then haven’t gone to the body the way that Salido did, and he’s done well.

If Salido has a weight and hand problem, you can’t doubt that. He looked heavy in his recent fight against journeyman Aristides Perez last month on May 27. Salido looked slow and out of shape in that fight. He was hurt by a big uppercut from Perez (30-10-2, 16 KOs). There’s no way that Salido would have been able to get in shape in time for a fight with Lomachenko.

Salido has been out of the ring since June of last year when he was arguably robbed of a win against Francisco Vargas. The fight was scored a draw. It was really bad scoring. I had Salido winning that fight 9 rounds to 3 Salido was also given a draw against Roman Martinez in his fight before that in September 2015. I had Salido winning that fight as well. The last clear defeat that Salido has had was in 2013 in his fight against Mikey Garcia. I thought Salido was robbed in his first fight with Roman Martinez in April 2015.

I don’t think there’s anything Lomachenko can gain in trying to fight Salido a second time. Unless Top Rank is going to sweeten the deal to try and get Salido to accept the fight, they’re going to have to move on and look to move their fighter Lomachenko up to lightweight. It’s no good in having Lomachenko fight Oscar Valdez’s left overs in Marriaga. Lomachenko’s other recent wins were nothing special. The super featherweight is not a popular one.

Lomachenko needs to move up to lightweight and take on Mikey Garcia for him to start gaining boxing fans. If Lomachenko doesn’t lose, he needs to move up to 140 and test himself against the best in that weight class like Adrien “The Problem” Broner and Terence Crawford. If Lomachenko doesn’t fancy making that move, then he’ll need to be content with the lack of interest that he’ll be getting from fighting at super featherweight and lightweight. Lomachenko can play it safe fighting the likes of Marriaga.

Moving Lomachenko from HBO to ESPN seems to be a calculated move on Top Rank’s part to reach more boxing fans to try and increase Lomachenko’s popularity. It can work to some extent if Lomachenko changes his fighting style to become a more fan friendly fighter. He’s too defensive for me. I prefer to see fighters that look land shots, not fighters that spend most of their time trying not to get hit. We saw how Lomahenko ran around the ring to avoid getting hit by Gary Russell Jr. in their fight a couple of years ago. It was like watching an ugly amateur fight. It didn’t resemble a professional fight. We saw the same defensive moves from Lomachenko in his fights with Nicholas Walters and Sosa. It was very boring to watch. I kept waiting for Lomachenko to let his hands go. Lomachenko needs to fight more like someone like Gennady Golovkin or Saul Canelo Alvarez if he wants to become popular. It doesn’t matter that Lomachenko is fighting on ESPN now. If he’s not going to fight in an exciting manner, then he’ll be just like one of the many house fighters on that network that failed to become huge stars. Guys like Salido are extremely popular because he brings it each time he fights. Salido isn’t afraid to get hit to make it exciting for the boxing fans. That’s why he’s in demand. The fans love Salido. If Lomachenko can change his own fighting style to become more fan friendly like Salido and GGG, he could win over a lot of fans. If Lomachenko can’t or won’t do that, then I see it as pointless him fighting on ESPN. I don’t think he’ll ever get popular enough to be a PPV fighter.

Lomachenko has won 7 fights since his loss to Salido in 2014, but none of the victories has made the fans in the boxing world forget about his defeat. They still remember how Salido was nailing Lomachenko to the body, and how the Ukrainian fighter was holding excessively to prevent from getting hit. It was sad to see, because Lomachenko looked panicky.