Arum: Juanma Possibly Back on 10/1, Salido in 2012

By Keith Idec

Juan Manuel Lopez won’t get an opportunity to avenge his upset loss to Orlando Salido until sometime in 2012.

Neither Showtime, which televised Salido’s eighth-round TKO win April 16 in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, nor HBO have dates and the required financial resources remaining in the networks’ 2011 budgets to broadcast that featherweight championship rematch before the end of this year.

“The networks, whether it’s HBO or Showtime, they should have budget directors because by the middle of the year they’re out of money for the year,” said promoter Bob Arum, whose company, Top Rank Inc., co-promotes Lopez. “What is that? People should learn how to count. But if they don’t have any more money left for this year, what other choice do we have but to push it to next year?”

Lopez (30-1, 27 KOs) will take an interim fight while waiting to face Salido again. The target date for that tune-up bout is Oct. 1, likely somewhere in Puerto Rico, but executives at Top Rank and Peter Rivera, Lopez’s Puerto-Rico based co-promoter, haven’t started seriously discussing potential opponents.

Mexico’s Salido (36-11-2, 24 KOs, 1 NC) also has expressed an interest in attempting to make another defense of the WBO featherweight title prior to a second fight against Lopez. Salido stopped Japan’s Kenichi Yamaguchi (17-2-2, 4 KOs, 1 NC) in the 11th round of his first defense July 23 in Ciudad Obregon, Mexico.

Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, NJ., and BoxingScene.com.