Last night’s action oriented HBO card definitely flew under the radar, but it delivered in the ring as it promised to on paper. In the end we saw the last fight of a modern action legend, some scoring controversy, and one of the more visually disturbing injuries in some time. It was an eventful show.
It took Orlando Salido the first minute to get warmed up. By the end of the opening frame, however, he seemed to hurt Miguel Roman a bit with a big right hand in the corner that had him desperately clinching his way through the last few seconds before the bell. Salido came out and dominated the first two plus minutes in the second based on the strength of having Roman hurt at the end of the first, but Miguel rallied well in the last minute and had Salido in a bit of trouble himself.
Roman carried that momentum into the third. The round functioned as an inverse of the second though with Salido being the one to rally towards the end. The fourth round brought the biggest moment of the early stages of the fight when Micky Roman timed a nice low right hand when Salido was ducking. The shot staggered the long time top Mexican backwards and onto the canvas. Salido wasn’t really hurt, but it was a well placed knockdown nonetheless.
The fifth was a classic phone both war that I thought Roman edged. Salido landed a little more, but he wasn’t taking his opponent’s shots quite as well in my eyes. The former titleholder opened the sixth with a really big right hand, but Roman took it reasonably well. It took them about a minute to get back into their phone booth after that. I still saw Roman doing the slightly better work at this point.
The war continued into the seventh. I thought something very early bothered Orlando as his legs seemed off and he began clinching. He fought the rest of the round off the ropes. Salido still got some great shots in, but it seemed like maybe the tide had turned. This was confirmed in the eighth round when Roman dropped Salido for the second time. This time he would have finished the fight were it not for the gigantic heat beating out of Salido’s chest in the form of a few beautiful left hands in response.
Heart isn’t enough at 39, however. At the start of the ninth Salido was firing back well, but before long he was back on the ropes taking damage. About half way through the round, Salido collapsed on the ropes. Post fight he revealed that that was the final collapse of an epic career. Thank you for all the memories, Orlando Salido.
I am going rant a bit instead of doing a traditional recap for the co-main event. As sometimes Max Kellerman hesitantly hints at on air, Harold Lederman is not a consistently good scorer. In my view, he never has been. This in itself is harmless, but it has a ripple effect. Tonight Kenichi Ogawa (23-1, 17 KOs) picked up the IBF junior lightweight title in a very close fought win over Tevin Farmer (25-5-1, 5 KOs). I thought the decision could go either way, but Lederman had it a wipe out for the Philadelphia fighter.
Virtually every round was extremely close. Farmer would land a flash shot and then win the Compubox game, but the vast majority of his shots were super light touches while everything Ogawa threw did a level of damage. Many times Compubox tells a misleading tale and this was one of them. I scored this a draw, all the way complaining that it would be reasonable for Ogawa to get the decision while knowing that it will be treated as a robbery if it were to happen. This is was what happened 100% because HBO presents an inconsistent scorer’s word as gospel to the viewers.
In the opener, Francisco Vargas (24-1-2, 17 KOs) got his career back on track with a technical decision over English fighter Stephen Smith (25-4, 15 KOs). There was a lot of talk during the fight about Vargas fighting more tactically, but to my eye the Mexican was the same old brawler. Early on he controlled the fight. Sort of counter intuitively, however, the more the fight became a Vargas brawl in the middle rounds, the better Smith was doing
Unfortunately, by the those middle rounds Stephen Smith’s ear was notably swollen. By the last few rounds of the fight, Vargas had taken back over. So when Smith’s ear quite disgustingly split in half on one last accidental headbutt, the fight went to the cards and Francisco Vargas won a deserved decision. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch with caution. This was a truly disgusting injury.
