Moments ago inside of the Ruben Rodriguez Coliseum in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, Juan Manuel Lopez suffered the first loss of his professional career by way of 8th TKO to former champion Orlando Salido. Lopez appeared to be in control in the early rounds but the fight would eventually unravel from him in one of the year’s biggest upsets.
Lopez was in command through round one through four although Salido was game and applying pressure of his own. In the fifth Salido would catch the champion with a beautiful left-right combination that had him on his ass and in serious trouble.
Lopez was weary in the sixth but appeared to be strong as he fought back bravely in the seventh round. In the eight and onrushing Salido appeared to tag Lopez and pinned him against the ropes. Lopez was shaken but despite firing back he would see the fight waived off moments just seconds into Salido’s assault.
Upon seeing the referee’s verdict an extremely upset Lopez protested the decision but it was all for not. Lopez not only sees his record drop to 30-1 with 27 knockouts but also sees a huge fight with WBA champion Yuriorkis Gamboa go out the window, at least momentarily.
Through seven rounds the scorecards were even at 66-66 and Lopez honestly didn’t appear to be too shaken up when the fight was waved off. Still, this is a huge blow and he will definitely have to go back to the drawing board.
Lopez did recently go through a strenuous divorce and noted that the process had affected him. He also remarked that he had much left to offer in this particular fight.
“He was hitting me but they shouldn’t have stopped the fight. I was still conscious.”
We last saw Salido inside of the Palms Casino as he was dropping a unanimous decision to Gamboa and who would have thought that he would become a champion again in his following fight? To his credit, the stubborn pug fully embraced the idea of a rematch to Lopez and we may be seeing these two again.
Chris Robinson is based out of Las Vegas, Nevada. He can be reached at [email protected]
