By Steve Kim
Currently junior lightweight contender Edner Cherry is looking for a fight and his promoter Russell Peltz, has an idea.
"Orlando Salido will fight him if HBO will buy it," he told BoxingScene.com on Wednesday evening."That's the problem. There's nobody (Cherry) wont fight. That where we are right now. He'd even fight at lightweight if the right fight."
Salido is coming off an exciting 11th round stoppage of Terdsak Kokietgym on September 20th in Tijuana, Mexico to capture the interim WBO 130-pound belt. Peltz was told by Sean Gibbons of Zanfer Promotions that if HBO would accept this match-up, they were game.
"Absolutely, Orlando Salido ducks nobody,"said Gibbons."Orlando Salido throughout his career has always fought the best. The only thing Orlando ever asks is,'Who am I fighting?' and 'How much am I getting paid?' So I was happy to tell 'the Boy Wonder', the Hall-of-Fame promoter from Philadelphia,'If you can somehow get HBO to pony up some dollars that makes sense, we're happy to do that fight, anywhere.
"HBO, they're not even interested in a Salido-Rocky Martinez fight which would put 10,000 people in the arena in Puerto Rico. It's a fight-of-the-year-type fight and that's not on their radar, I was told."
Now, what has to be figured out is just how much would have to be put forth by HBO as a license fee to bring both sides to the table. Also, does this fight figure into the short and long range plans of the network, which now finds itself back in business with Golden Boy Promotions and has made the likes of Gennady Golovkin, Saul Alvarez and Sergey Kovalev a priority.
Peter Nelson, HBO Sports Vice President of Programming, declined to give comment on this story.
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com
