Vasyl Lomachenko vs. Orlando Salido II targeted for early August

By Chris Williams: The rematch between WBO super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko (8-1, 6 KOs) and former two division world champion Orlando Salido (43-13-4, 30 KOs) is being targeted for early August, according to RingTV.com. Lomachenko’s promoter Bob Arum is looking at making the Lomachenko-Salido rematch at around that time at a still to be determined venue in the U.S.

Fortunately for the boxing fans, Arum will be looking to stage the fight in the U.S rather than overseas like he’s done at times in the past. That would have been tough to see Lomachenko and Salido fighting in Macao, China like with some of Arum’s other cards in the past.

Lomachenko, 29, wants to avenge his loss to Salido from 2014. It’s unfortunate that the rematch has taken this long to finally happen because Salido is now 36-years-old and he hasn’t won a fight since 2014. Lomachenko doesn’t mind that Salido has been winless for 3 years. He still wants to fight him.

Whether Lomachenko wants to admit it or not, he’s probably not going to get full credit for beating Salido at this stage, because the Mexican fighter’s record is 1-1-2 in his last 4 fights since his win over Lomachenko. However, you can definitely argue that Salido’s true record should be 4-0 in his last 4 fights, because he appeared to win all four of them, especially the two draws. Salido fought to a 12 round draw in his last two fights against Francisco Vargas and Roman Martinez. I scored the Salido-Vargas fight 9 rounds to 3 in favor of Salido.

It looked the judges gave Vargas a lot of rounds that were one-sided in favor of Salido. In the Salido-Martinez rematch, I scored it 8 rounds to 4 in favor of Salido. That was a very one-sided fight in 8 of the rounds in which Salido gave Martinez a terrible beating. The 4 rounds that Martinez appeared to win were very close. In both of those fights, Salido was the B-side. Salido was in a position where probably would have needed to knock both of those fighters out in order to get a win.

Lomachenko was out of his league when he fought Salido in 2014. Salido ignored all the head movement that Lomachenko was using, and he immediately started pounding the 2-time Olympic gold medalist to the body. Lomachenko didn’t know how to get out of the way of body shots. Lomachenko’s head movement was useless, as Salido continued to pound the Ukrainian to the body round after round.

By the second half of the fight, Lomachenko started to clinch like crazy to keep Salido from throwing his body punches. Lomachenko should have had point deductions for his holding in this writer’s opinion because he did it so often. The referee really gave Lomachenko a tremendous break by not taking points away for his excellent holding.

In the 12th round, Lomachenko finally stopped holding and started fighting. He had Salido hurt at the end, but he couldn’t finish the job. The judges gave Salido the victory by a narrow 12 round split decision. I had Salido winning 11 rounds to 1. I only gave Lomachenko the 12th because he was holding so much. Salido was fortunate to get the win given the poor scoring of the fight.

Salido has a 10 round fight coming up this month on May 27 against Thailand fighter Amphon Suriyo (18-2, 12 KOs) at the Ciudid Obregon, in Sonora, Mexico. Hopefully for Salido’s case he can get through that fight without suffering an injury. There’s only three months that separates Salido’s fight with Suriyo from a rematch with Lomachenko. If Salido suffers an injury against Suriyo, then it will need to push back his rematch with Lomachenko.

Salido hasn’t fought since June of last year when he was arguably robbed in his fight with Francisco Vargas. It’s good that Salido has taken the time off from boxing because his last 3 fights were grueling affairs against Vargas and Roman Martinez. Salido dished out more punishment than he took in all three of those fights, but he still took a fair amount of heavy shots himself in those fights.

It’s more than a little surprising that Lomachenko is interested in facing Salido in a rematch right now, because there’s been a lot of talk of him facing Mikey Garcia at lightweight. The fact that Lomachenko is still interested enough in fighting Salido at super featherweight suggests that there might be some doubt in Lomachenko’s mind that he can beat Mikey. There appears to be no doubt at all in Mikey’s mind that he can beat Lomachenko.

Mikey is ready for that fight right now if the Ukrainian fighter is willing to take him on. Lomachenko seems to need to a confidence booster with him fighting Salido. This move could backfire on Lomachenko if Salido goes back to the same game plan that he used in their previous fight in 2014. I don’t know if you can call what Salido did against Lomachenko as a game plan. It seemed more like Salido fighting good old fashioned Mexican boxing and Lomachenko had no concept of how to deal with that kind of fighting. Lomachenko has fought in Europe against guys that would stand on the outside and throw head shots. Lomachenko wasn’t ready to fight someone that targeted his body the way that Salido was doing in that fight.

It turned out to be a real nightmare for Lomachenko from start to finish. Forget about the odd scoring of the fight, Salido gave Lomachenko a real thrashing in that fight. The bad news is that if Lomachenko loses to Salido in a rematch, then it could derail his plans for a fight against Mikey Garcia. Lomachenko would have to swallow his pride and either move on or try and get a third fight against Salido. I think that would be the smartest move in the world for Lomachenko to face Salido a third time. Lomachenko would have to admit that he doesn’t have the skillset or the toughness to deal with a Mexican warrior like Salido. We already found that out the last time Lomachenko fought Salido. Lomachenko wasn’t tough enough and he had to hold Salido all night to keep from being knocked out.