Was Warlando Salido The Toughest Fight Ever For A Second Pro Fight???

He was Mikey Garcia's toughest fight, and that was his 31st.... and he was no walk in the park for Gamboa in his 19th fight, so, yeah, pretty much.

 

Also throw in the fact that he utterly ruined Vargas as a top fighter after facing Lomachenko, and make no mistake, Vargas was great, and probably softened up Rocky Martinez, effectively ending him, Salido is a monster, as long as he has time to prepare. He gets dropped by far lesser fighters, because he probably comes into the fights assuming they'll be a walk in the park, and half asses his preparations for them.

 

Salido had lost 12 fights when Loma fought him. However, like a lot of Mexican fighters he turned pro at a very young age (he was 15 when he made his pro debut) and he either had a very limited amateur career or he didn't have one at all. So he was obviously still doing his apprenticeship and learning his trade back then, which is why he went 8-6-1 in his first four years as a pro and was stopped in 5 of those 6 loses - 2 by KO and 3 by TKO. He obviously improved a ridiculous amount after that atrocious start to his career. And he was fighting grown men back then and he had terrible management too.

Going into the Loma fight Salido had only lost to 4 opponents in 12 years. Four loses in 12 years and all bar 1 on points (a TD loss to Mikey Garcia) as opposed to 6 loses in 4 years, 5 by stoppage, when he turned pro.

These are those 4 fighters he lost against

Juan Manuel Marquez who was 42-2-1 at the time and had just fought to a draw in his previous fight against a prime Pacquiao.

Mikey Garcia 30-0-0

Yuriorkis Gamboa 18-0-0

And a SD to Cristobal Cruz 36-11-1 (don't be fooled by the record Cruz was a good fighter) which Salido avenged 3 fights later by wide scores.

Salido was down against Garcia 4 times but he was actually coming back into it a bit and causing Garcia some problems before the headbutt busted Garcia's hooter. IIRC he won the 6th round.

Salido floored Gamboa.

And the Salido that fought Loma weighed 128¼ on the scales, 3lbs more than Loma and he had a 11lb weight advantage on the night, whereas the Salido that fought Marquez, Gamboa, and Garcia had to drain himself down to 126 and they were all roughly the same weight as him in the ring.

Gamboa 140 - Salido 140

Salido 147 - Lomachenko 136

Garcia was a massive FW

Marquez was coming in close to 140 whilst campaigning at FW, probably round about 138 give or take a pound.

Loma was 1-0 when he fought Salido and he had never been past 5 rounds before

And he fought Salido in Texas which is tantamount to a home fight for a Mexican, especially one who's facing an opponent from somewhere as far afield as Ukraine.

Marquez had been past 8 rounds something like 19 or 20 times when he fought Salido.

Cruz had been past 8 something like 28 times when he fought Salido.

Gamboa had been past 8 rounds 4 times when he fought Salido.

And Garcia had been past 8 rounds 6 times.

 

Thanks. Yes he improved a lot after that fight and improved very quickly too. He'd only been a pro for 8 months when he fought Russell but he looked fantastic in that one.