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The only regret Orlando Salido had when seeing Mikey Garcia lose his featherweight title on the scales this past June, was not having the opportunity to regain the title against the man who dethroned him.
He gets the next best thing, a shot at the vacant belt as he faces Puerto Rico’s Orlando Cruz in their co-feature attraction Saturday evening at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.
The main event pits Tim Bradley versus Juan Manuel Marquez in a welterweight title fight, which tops a four-fight pay-per-view card.
Salido has endured an alarming number of peaks and valleys in his career to forge out two separate title reigns. His first tour as a featherweight titlist was one and done, conceding the belt to Yuriorkis Gamboa mere months after claiming the strap.
A stoppage win over then-unbeaten Juan Manuel Lopez breathed new life into Salido’s career, scoring a major upset to win another belt in their April ’11 encounter. A near two-year reign followed, including a repeat stoppage over Lopez in their rematch last March. The victory tour came to an end earlier this year, when Garcia soundly outboxed him in their abbreviated bout this past January.
Cruz enters the fight having won four straight, though none anywhere near on the level of Salido. Still, the Puerto Rican boxer is brimming with confidence, looking to make history on several levels. A win tonight makes him the third boxer from the 2000 Puerto Rico Olympic boxing squad to claim a major title, giving that team more champions than any other in the island’s history as he would join former champs and teammates Miguel Cotto (who will be at ringside tonight) and Ivan Calderon.
More famously, Cruz would also become the first openly gay boxer to own a significant belt, on a weekend celebrating the one-year anniversary of his bravely coming out.
Read on to see how the staff at Boxingscene.com believes tonight’s co-feature bout will go down. [Click Here To Read More]
He gets the next best thing, a shot at the vacant belt as he faces Puerto Rico’s Orlando Cruz in their co-feature attraction Saturday evening at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.
The main event pits Tim Bradley versus Juan Manuel Marquez in a welterweight title fight, which tops a four-fight pay-per-view card.
Salido has endured an alarming number of peaks and valleys in his career to forge out two separate title reigns. His first tour as a featherweight titlist was one and done, conceding the belt to Yuriorkis Gamboa mere months after claiming the strap.
A stoppage win over then-unbeaten Juan Manuel Lopez breathed new life into Salido’s career, scoring a major upset to win another belt in their April ’11 encounter. A near two-year reign followed, including a repeat stoppage over Lopez in their rematch last March. The victory tour came to an end earlier this year, when Garcia soundly outboxed him in their abbreviated bout this past January.
Cruz enters the fight having won four straight, though none anywhere near on the level of Salido. Still, the Puerto Rican boxer is brimming with confidence, looking to make history on several levels. A win tonight makes him the third boxer from the 2000 Puerto Rico Olympic boxing squad to claim a major title, giving that team more champions than any other in the island’s history as he would join former champs and teammates Miguel Cotto (who will be at ringside tonight) and Ivan Calderon.
More famously, Cruz would also become the first openly gay boxer to own a significant belt, on a weekend celebrating the one-year anniversary of his bravely coming out.
Read on to see how the staff at Boxingscene.com believes tonight’s co-feature bout will go down. [Click Here To Read More]