By Steve Kim

It was with much excitement that a fight between Orlando Salido and Takashi Miura was announced a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, a few days ago that match-up was postponed as Salido had to pull out of that December 17th assignment at the Forum in Los Angeles with a back injury.

According to his adviser Sean Gibbons - who explained that Salido hurt himself doing some construction work on one of his properties - the rugged Mexican will be out of commission for "about three weeks without really doing anything. So there wasn't any time to really prepare for December. Into the new year we can re-visit everything. It depends on what HBO wants to do."

Salido-Miura was going to be contested for the WBC interim 130-pound title. Moving forward, Gibbons says that Salido yearns for the most lucrative fights available to him. Back on June 4th he battled to a memorable draw against WBC titlist, Francisco Vargas.

"We want Muira, we want Vargas, if we can get Miura, we want Vargas. If we can't get  Vargas, we want Miura," stated Gibbons. "Salido wants the biggest and best fights that he can get paid the most money for and win a world title. That's what he wants."

The new main event on December 17th on this HBO card is the farewell fight of Bernard Hopkins who is matched versus the heavy-handed Joe Smith. Golden Boy Promotions is working in conjunction with the network to round out the rest of the card. It's not clear when Salido - who turns 36 on November 16th - will return to the airwaves of HBO.

"It's unfortunate that this happened, first time ever in his career,'' lamented Gibbons.

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.