Juan Manuel Marquez vs. Orlando Salido, 09/18/2004
Entering 2004, Juan Manuel Marquez had ascended to the top of the featherweight division. The previous year, he had won his first world title with a TKO win against veteran Manuel Medina for a vacant featherweight belt and then became a unified champion later that year with a technical decision win against Derrick Gainer.
Marquez would defend both featherweight title belts on May 8th, 2004 against the fast rising Manny Pacquiao. Despite being knocked down three times in the first round of that fight, Marquez would rally back and earn a draw in a memorable contest. A rematch with Pacquiao seemed inevitable but first Marquez had some mandatory requirements to satisfy before he could entertain thoughts of a second get together with Pacquiao.
Orlando Salido would come up the hard way in the sport. He was stopped in his first professional fight and after a decision loss to Alejandro Gonzalez in 2001 Salido would drop his professional record to a pedestrian mark of 14-8-2. He seemed destined to journeyman status in the sport but something happened after that loss to Gonzalez. Things started to click for Salido and he rallied off nine consecutive wins, some against solid competition, to position himself as a mandatory challenger for one of Marquez's title belts.
Marquez (42-2-1, 33 KO's) and Salido (23-8-2, 15 KO's) would meet on September 18th, 2004. Their fight would be the chief undercard support for the big Oscar De La Hoya-Bernard Hopkins middleweight title fight.
The fight between Marquez and Salido was a very tactical affair from the onset. Marquez was content to box and counterpunch at a measured rate fighting off his backfoot. He controlled the first five rounds fighting in this manner. Salido, for his part, was coming forward but not opening up and being easily out worked by Marquez.
In round six, Salido seemed to put his foot on the gas some and opened up more as he pressed forward. This led to some solid exchanges though the master counter puncher in Marquez seemed to still be getting the better of the action. Still, there seemed to be some hope emerging for Salido after being seemingly out classed in the earlier rounds.
Following up on his more aggressive manner in round six, Salido enjoyed his best round of the fight in the seventh. He used effective aggression to neutralize the attack of Marquez. Salido was busy this round and landed several clean shots to the head and body of Marquez.
Salido tried to continue his momentum going into the eighth but Marquez upped his game once again showcasing his brilliant counterpunching abilities. His counter punches, often in combination, seemed to discourage Salido who was not moving his hands as much as in the preceding round. Marquez had essentially stemmed any momentum Salido had going with sharp accurate punches and got back to out boxing Salido.
Marquez continued to out box Salido in rounds nine and ten. Fighting off his back foot liked he had been doing most of the fight, Marquez out worked Salido these rounds landing more often and more accurately. Whether he was leading or countering, Marquez was finding a way to land cleanly without getting hit much. The work rate of Salido also had begun to drop to where it was in the opening rounds and by the end of the tenth Marquez had what appeared to be a large lead on the scorecards.
With the fight in hand, Marquez dropped his work rate the last two rounds going into a bit of a prevent defense. And perhaps sensing he was behind on the cards, Salido came out more aggressively these last two rounds willing to let his hands fly with more abandon. Salido controlled these rounds landing the cleaner harder punches to both the head and body. But he was unable to hurt Marquez who seemed on his way to winning a decision as the bell sounded to end round twelve.
The scorecards would be read and as expected all three judges had Marquez comfortably winning. Two judges saw the bout 118-110 with the third seeing it as 117-111 all in favor of Marquez.
Initially the thought was that Marquez would head into a rematch with Pacquiao sometime in 2005. That did not happen and Marquez had only one fight in 2005 decisioning veteran Victor Polo.
Salido bounced back following this set back with a pair of wins in 2005. One of those wins came against former featherweight champion Cesar Soto and helped position Salido right back into featherweight title contention going into 2006.