Orlando Salido’s and Miguel Roman’s upcoming HBO brawl has been lost in the hype surrounding the super fight against it Saturday night. While that is understandable, it is also too bad. This is likely to be a great one and the best fight in terms of action of the weekend.
Don’t be surprised if we end up with a late entry fight of the year candidate here when this HBO card is over. Orlando Salido (44-13-4, 31 KOs) has always been a hardnosed, heart and action oriented fighter. Hell, 21 years ago he even had to come back from being knocked out in his pro debut. Though in all those years Salido never really made it to the absolute peak of the sport, he beat some outstanding fighters and has been a world titleholder.
As he has aged, the Mexican warrior has become even more of a brawler too. He used his very professional, foul filled aggression to overwhelm the still amateur minded Vasyl Lomachenko in 2014. That was an entertaining one. His next four only got better. After an underappreciated brawl with Thailand’s Terdsak Kokietgym in which seven knockdowns were scored, Salido was outboxed a little by Rocky Martinez. A rematch with Martinez, however, brought back the fire and turned into an epic draw. Salido then only topped it with one of the best fights of 2016 with an absolute war against Francisco Vargas. That turned out to be another draw.
Miguel Roman (57-12, 44 KOs) has never had the upper echelon success of Orlando Salido and is rightfully the underdog here, but so was Terdsak Kokietgym and he had the Mexican down three times. In January, Roman engaged in an epic war with since retired Japanese fighter Takashi Miura that, in terms of pure violent action, could still end up being fight of the year. Roman was stopped late, but he gave a real good and exciting account of himself that night.
There is no way Orlando Salido and Miguel Roman can go in the ring and fight a fight that isn’t highly entertaining. It might not be the only one on the card too.
Francisco Vargas (23-1-2, 17 KOs) is returning in the co-main event. Just as much as either Salido or Roman, Vargas is guaranteed action. There is concern that he is damaged goods on some level following his consecutive wars and the beating Miguel Berchelt put on him in January, however. That plus the fact that England’s Stephen Smith (25-3, 15 KOs) isn’t known as an action fighter means that this fight doesn’t have the same sort of expectations as the main event. Again, however, Francisco Vargas is never in a bad fight. He needs this win badly too.
Finally, opening the tripleheader is a vacant IBF title fight in the same junior lightweight division as the other two bouts. Philadelphia’s Tevin Farmer (25-4-1, 5 KOs) and Kenichi Ogawa of Japan (22-1, 17 KOs) will meet for the belt. Ogawa has been a top Japanese scene fighter for a while now while Farmer has had a nice comeback story in his career after starting 4-3-1. The winner will be in the running for a much bigger fight down the road and it is nice to see these guys get their HBO shot.
HBO will have the broadcast at 10:20 PM Eastern. Record this one to watch in the morning, if not right after the huge fight on ESPN.
