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Orlando Salido was supposed to defend his WBO featherweight title against Mikey Garcia last night in Las Vegas, but an injury forced him out of the date, and Garcia instead fought and defeated former super bantamweight titlist Jonathan Barros, scoring a TKO in the eighth round.
Salido vs Garcia is now set and rescheduled for January 19 at The Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York, with HBO televising. Gennady Golovkin will also be featured on the card.
Salido (39-11-2, 27 KO) told Yahoo! Sports' Kevin Iole after last night's fights that Garcia will need a better performance if he hopes to leave NYC with his first world title:
"He started very slowly and if he starts that way against me, he doesn't have the capability to beat me," Salido said. "That was a good left hand. It was a good punch he landed, and it's his signature punch, but [Barros] and I are different fighters. He won't do that to me."
Garcia (30-0, 26 KO) is a hot property at the moment, but so was Juan Manuel Lopez when Salido knocked him off for the first time in 2011. Salido also beat Lopez in a rematch earlier this year.
Golovkin (24-0, 21 KO) has no opponent set, but expectations should probably be fairly low. None of the major middleweights are going to fight him yet, and HBO was right to have reservations about Golovkin headlining another card. As good as he is, and as much as his win over Grzegorz Proksa excited diehard fans, he delivered an awful TV rating and there were reportedly concerns about K2 Promotions having the ability to provide a good co-feature fight. Last time out, Serhiy Dzinziruk and Jonathan Gonzalez fought to a boring draw in the featured undercard fight.
With Top Rank leading the promotion, those fears no longer exist. There has also been talk about Juan Manuel Lopez facing Wilfredo Vazquez Jr in a grudge match -- and with both being Puerto Rican names, they'd probably be relied on to bring in the majority of the fans in New York -- but there are some serious doubts that fight will happen just yet.