Let's just look at the
facts for a moment.
Lomachenko was attemping to set a world record in professional boxing history by being the first fighter to ever win a world title in just his second professional fight. It'd literally never been done before throughout the sport's entire history. Salido had been a pro boxer for well over a decade and a half (since 1996) and had tons of pro experience heading into the fight, including at the championship level, as he was one and previously was one. Salido decided to not even bother making weight, came in 2.25 pounds over the Featherweight (126) limit, lost his title to the scale, and then rehydrated up 17 pounds (possibly even more than this after the fight day unofficial weigh-ins) by the time they fought. Loma made weight (under, actually, he was 125.25 and Salido was 3 pounds heavier) and on fight night, Loma weighed 136. He rehydrated the usual 10 pounds while Salido was 147 pounds, an 11 (if not more) pound difference between them in the fight. That's just a pound shy of being 2 full weight classes apart. Salido came in as a full out Welterweight with no cut while Loma came in as a Lightweight with no cut that was just a pound over the 135 upper limit for that division.
Salido is the dirtiest fighter in the sport. Ask anyone that watches boxing religiously and they'll tell you that. It allowed him to be very competitive with Vargas too and he sliced him open badly with headbutts. He's constantly headbutting, excessively holding (especially when he's hurt, when Loma hurt him as well), holding and hitting, punching off the break and repeatedly low blowing his opponents to the upper thighs, hips and directly to the groin. He doesn't fight clean at all. Back in 2006, he fought and beat Robert Guerrero for the IBF Featherweight title and was busted for steroids (Nandrolone), so he was stripped of that title and it was overturned to a No Contest. So, to make matters even worse for him, he's a confirmed PED cheat too.
It's really hard to in-fight when your opponent is hellbent on smashing you in the dick, balls and hips the whole fight for 12 rounds. He ended up winning an extremely controversial Split Decision (one judge scored it for Lomachenko) and the corrupt ref didn't even deduct a single point during the contest, just issued a warning, when many points should've been taken, or, he should've been outright DQ'ed. It was one of the worst reffing jobs in the last 20 years by Texas ref Laurence Cole. He had a lot of answering to do after that one and was criticized by everybody including HBO (including calls for him to be investigated). Lomachenko even managed to outland Salido and that was only his second pro fight and his first 12 rounder. He also nearly finished him at the end of the fight. This was with a purely amateur style as he hadn't even adjusted to the pro game yet whatsoever. That's really embarrassing for Salido, when you think about it. Ever since, any time one of Loma's opponents low blow him they get an immediate warning and points have already been taken, for example, from Gammy Rodriguez, the WBO #1 ranked contender when he fought and low blowed Loma himself.
Let's take a look at just a few of Salido's low blows that he was landing throughout the fight. Keep in mind, this is a professional boxer, a world champion, doing this to a green as you can get just turned pro prospect in Lomachenko.
Salido's own Wikipedia page mentions the incidents during their fight and the people that run his page are his fans lol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Salido
It also has its own Wikipedia page entry dedicated to the controversy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Salido_vs._Vasyl_Lomachenko
You already know what will happen in a rematch.
It's supposed to be coming next. This time there will be a rehydration clause where Salido won't be able to balloon up 19 pounds and be allowed to miss weight on purpose in the first place. If he wants to foul Loma then he'll be penalized for it and it'll cost him the points that it should've in the first place, where he would've lost that decision to Lomachenko in their first outing had that happened and Loma would've went on to make the history that he should've (which he still did but it was in his next fight against GJR).
No unbiased boxing fan (or fighter) actually counts that Salido fight as a legitimate loss. Why? Because it wasn't clean, far from it, Salido was outlanded according to the punch stats, it was just his second pro fight and first 12 rounder, and it was a Split Decision that should've gone to Loma after the proper point deductions were taken. Lomachenko is being fast tracked extremely quickly and doesn't care about doing everything in his power to protect his "0". He doesn't want to be protected and just fight bums to pad his record like you see with most boxers coming up in the pro ranks. Instead, he wants challenges, not easy fights. It's a breath of fresh air that he's constantly looking for titleholders in his divisions to fight. He already moved up and fought Martinez for his WBO Jr. Lightweight title and won it because
nobody wanted to fight him at Featherweight after he smashed undefeated Olympian and blue chip prospect Gary Russell Jr. for the vacant WBO Featherweight title (Gary is now a Featherweight champion himself).
If you fight Lomachenko fair you're bound to lose. Unless you can land the big one, you'll be soundly outboxed, beaten up in the process, likely end up looking foolish and possibly KTFO'ed like Roman "Rocky" Martinez was. He had never been knocked out aside from a liver shot from Mikey Garcia years ago and on fight night he was 7 pounds heavier than Loma. That didn't matter. But, credit to Rocky for fighting Loma clean when others don't want to do this (or even fight him for that matter). They get desperate and resort to cheating because they can't beat the guy fair and square according to the rules.
Floyd fought some absolute nobody named Reggie Sanders in his second pro fight and that was only a 4 rounder. The guy was 1-1 going into their fight and was previously KO'ed in his previous fight. Sanders is now 12-47-4 as a pro.
http://boxrec.com/boxer/7056 It wasn't until Floyd's 18th fight that he even fought for a world title despite how talented he was and highly touted when he turned pro. Let that sink in.
