Salido: If I Tested Positive, Vargas Fight Would’ve Been Canceled

By Keith Idec

Orlando Salido signed off on moving forward with his highly anticipated June 4 fight against Francisco Vargas even after Vargas failed a performance-enhancing drug test last month.

Salido is 100-percent certain, though, that if he was the one that tested positive for a PED their 130-pound title fight would’ve been scrapped.

“If it would’ve been me that would’ve come up positive, you know the fight would’ve been canceled and it would’ve been all over,” Salido said through a translator during a conference call Wednesday. “It would’ve been done. It would’ve been done with. Is that justice? I don’t know. I’m just telling you that’s all I’ve got to say about that. They would never have given me an opportunity to prove otherwise.”

Mexico’s Salido (43-13-3, 1 NC) has been criticized as a PED abuser since he tested positive for nandrolone, an anabolic steroid, following a 12-round, unanimous-decision win against Robert Guerrero in an IBF featherweight title fight in November 2006 in Las Vegas. The result of their bout was changed to a no-contest by the Nevada State Athletic Commission and the IBF stripped Salido of the title he won from Guerrero.

Vargas (23-0-1, 17 KOs), the WBC world super featherweight champion, pushed for stringent Voluntary Anti-Doping Association testing prior to signing a contract to fight Salido. It was Mexico’s Vargas, however, that tested positive for clenbuterol during a test VADA administered April 21 in Mexico.

Ralph Heredia, Vargas’ manager, repeatedly emphasized during the conference call that Vargas’ positive test stemmed from contaminated meat he ate while in his native country.

However it happened, the California State Athletic Commission will allow the 31-year-old Vargas and the 35-year-old Salido to fight two weeks from Saturday night at StubHub Center in Carson, California. HBO will televise their scheduled 12-rounder as the main event of a “Boxing After Dark” telecast set to start at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT.

Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.