According to Dan Rafael of espn.com, WBA Featherweight champion Yuriorks Gamboa will now face IBF beltholder Orlando Salido after WBC champ Elio Rojas had to withdraw due to shoulder and hand injuries.
The fight will take place on September 11 at The Palms in Las Vegas.
“The doctor recommended that he be out for two months, so the fight is off,” said Rojas’ manager Tony Tineo. “Elio is very disappointed because he wanted to fight Gamboa and prove to the world that he is the best featherweight. He is very, very disappointed. He told me yesterday, ‘Oh, Tony, I have all my plans on how I’m going to beat Gamboa and then it all goes down.’ I told him, ‘We can fight him in the future.’ ”
“The hand was injured in that fight and that is why he didn’t knock Espadas out,” Tineo said. “Now it’s still giving him problems. Elio wants to fight, but as the manager, I spoke with the doctor and we made the decision. We decided no fight because the arm and hand were bothering him too much. We have to follow the doctor’s instructions. This is his future. I can’t send him into a fight with damage. I can’t let him fight with an injury.”
“We had Salido and wanted to make that fight. HBO wanted Rojas,” Said Bob Arum, who promotes both Gamboa and Salido. “So they went to [Rojas’ promoter] Don King and they got Rojas done. And then Rojas got hurt and he can’t fight and now we’ve gone back to Salido and HBO has OK’d Salido. Salido is a big puncher and it probably will be a more exciting fight than Rojas anyway because Rojas is more of a boxer. The fight with Gamboa should be a really good fight between two big punchers.”
Arum said HBO asked Top Rank to reconsider trying to make a deal for Gamboa to face Celestino Caballero, the former unified junior featherweight titlist who moved up in weight and made his HBO debut with a tremendous performance against Daud Yordan in April.
“We said, ‘Listen, it’s only about a month until the fight and the big guy [Caballero] towers over everybody,’ ” Arum said. “You have to get the right sparring partners. It’s not fair to do that to Gamboa on short notice. But what I told HBO is that we have no problem fighting the guy next as long as the money is right. I even told them we’ll do a nice Caballero fight on one of our pay-per-view undercards as long as it doesn’t cost me a lot of money and we can set up the fight next.”
