Gamboa vs Salido Unification in Play For July 24 on HBO

By Lem Satterfield

WBA champion Yuriorkis Gamboa, of Miami by way of Cuba, will likely face newly-crowned IBF king, Orlando Salido, of Ciudad Obregon, Sonora, Mex., in a unification bout on July 24 at the Palms Casino Resort, in Las Vegas, Gamboa's manager, Tony Gonzalez, informed FanHouse moments ago.

Gonzalez said that there was a consideration for a bout with 30-year-old, interim WBA super featherweight (130 pounds) titlist, Jorge Solis (39-2-2, 28 knockouts).
 
But Gonzalez said that the 28-year-old Gamboa (18-0, 15 KOs) chose the 29-year-old Salido (34-10-2, 22 KOs) after reviewing a video of Salido's September, 2004, unanimous decision, featherweight loss to Juan Manuel Marquez, the latter of whom is now the WBA and WBO lightweight (135 pounds) titlist.

"Coincidentally, last week, we were looking at Solis, and Yuriorkis and I were watching the video of the fight with Marquez at the featherweight division. Yuriorkis feels that Salido's style is very well suited for him," said Gonzalez, who helped Gamboa defect from Cuba, for whom he was an Olympic gold medalist.

"That was four, five years ago that Salido was fighting Marquez, and he was slow then, and Yuriorkis caught on to that. So if he was slow then, he's probably slower now," said Gonzalez. "Salido's a world champion, and if God allows us to, and we win, then he wins another belt. So it's looking more and more like Salido, and a way for us to get another strap around our waist. We would be the IBF champ."

Gamboa is coming off of last month's lopsided, 12-round unanimous decision over previously unbeaten Jonathan Victor Barros (28-1-1, 16 KOs) in the third defense of his title.

Prior to that, Gamboa had scored a second-round knockout of Tanzanian-born Rogers Mtagwa (26-14-2 18 KOs), dropping him once in the first round and twice in the second before referee Steve Smoger waved an end to the fight at 2:35 at Madison Square Garden's WaMu Theater in New York.

Before facing Mtagwa, Gamboa had impressively disposed of Whyber Garcia (22-7, 15 KOs), starting Garcia's demise with a left-right combination that dropped the oncoming challenger face-first on the canvas early in the round.

Salido is coming off of last month's split-decision, featherweight rematch of world champions that dethroned then-IBF titlist, Cristobal Cruz, of Tijuana, Mex., in Salido's hometown of Ciudad Obregon, Sonora, Mex., at Estadio "Tomás Oroz Gaytán.

Salido won for the third striaght time, while the 32-year-old Cruz slipped to 39-12-2, with 23 knockouts. Salido's last loss had come against Cruz, who defeated him by split-decision in October of 2008 for the vacant IBF crown.
 
The win over Salido was part of a run of 5-0-1 by Cruz that ended with the loss in their return bout which also stopped his run of three straight title defenses.
 
Cruz had been among the possible names mentioned as opponents for fellow featherweights such as Gamboa, WBA super champion, Chris John (43-0-2, 22 KOs), 26-year-old southpaw WBO titlist, Juan Manuel Lopez (28-0, 25 KOs), and WBC king, Elio Rojas (22-1, 23 KOs).

The victory over Barros ended Gamboa's run of seven consecutive knockouts.

"It's not the first time that he's gone the distance, but it is the first time that he's gone the distance in a championship fight. So I think that it was good for Yuriorkis to have to go the distance. It's something for experience. You know, after all, he still has less than 20 professional fights. So that's definitely good for him to have experienced that to keep in touch with what it's like to have to go 12 rounds," said Gonzalez.

"If there's an opponent or a fighter that is not going to go down once he gets hit, then that's something that he's going to have to keep in the back of his mind. If anything, it makes him train harder because that way, he knows that if it's not going to be a one or two round blowout, that he can adjust and go the distance," said Gonzalez. "He knows that he has to get his conditioning down for 12 rounds. So, yeah, it does help him for that, and I think that that's something that he's learned from this past fight, which is invaluable at this point in his career."

Lem Satterfield is the boxing editor at AOL FanHouse and the news editor at BoxingScene.com. To read more from Lem Satterfield, go to AOL FanHouse by Clicking Here.