Lightweight contender Andy Cruz (5-0, 2 KOs) hopes to land some big fights in 2025 following his one-sided 10-round unanimous decision win over Omar Salido (20-2, 14 KOs) at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas last Saturday night.
(Credit: Melina Pizano/Matchroom)
Cruz dominates
Cruz’s trainer, Derek ‘Bozy’ Ennis, wanted him to go all out for the knockout after hurting Salido repeatedly in the eighth round, but he couldn’t do it. He still won 99-91, 98-92 and 98-92. The judges were kind enough to give Salido any round as he didn’t seem to win any. It should have been 100-90 x 3.
Cruz’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, was tight-lipped afterward on who he might fight next. He mentioned going the IBF route, but that doesn’t look like a possibility for Andy to get a title shot in 2025.
Ideally, Hearn would like to match Cruz against Keyshawn Davis, but he’s not at all interested. Keyshawn did make an appearance last night, but probably only to be seen as a fighter hooking up with rising Cuban star Andy Cruz in the amateurs.
“If I were to rate my performance, I’d say it’s good, but there’s always room for improvement,” Andy Cruz told Social boxingjudging his performance in a one-sided win against Omar Salcido last Saturday night.
I put my best into the fight, but against a tough, good opponent. He was looking for a knockout early on because he knew that given my abilities, it was impossible for him to beat me on points,” Cruz continued.
“So what I did was I realized I was a lot faster than him. He was much slower than me. So I went out, used that speed and almost pulled him out at the end.”
The fight was a mismatch, because Salido was not in the same league as Andy Cruz, and that was obvious from the start of the fight. Salido was just charging every punch from the start, looking to score a knockout because he clearly knew his only path to victory was to get lucky. That’s how he fought in his previous fight against Chris Colbert on October 16. He invested maximum power in every punch, which eventually paid off with his ninth knockout victory.
“I think it’s important that you do that because you have to look at a lot of different ways,” Cruz said. “You face many different fighters and many strong opponents. So you are faced with many different situations in the ring and you have to be prepared to understand what you are doing in those situations.
“What I have to do is work hard to be accurate, quick, but also to come in and fight in this way to come in and do what I need to do.
Keyshawn’s bitterness
“I went in there, given that he is my son. I wanted to give him a big hug, but I was rejected. I don’t know if he’s mad at mebut hopefully we can reconcile our differences in the future the next time we meet,” Cruz said of being rebuffed by Keyshawn Davis when he tried to hug him last Saturday after his win over Salcido at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
Keyshawn Davis is still pretty bitter about his four amateur losses to Cruz and the hard times boxing fans are giving him. The way Keyshawn talks, it sounds like he sees himself as a star who doesn’t need to get into risky fights.
He has yet to fight anyone to have such a high opinion of himself, and he came to the pros after a failure against Cruz in the amateurs. He won’t dare to fight Cruz and make him ruin his chances for easy money.
“What I need to do now is enjoy this win and continue to do what I do, which is to go up and improve with each fighter. A more difficult fight awaits me with every fighter. What I can say is that 2025 is going to be very, very interesting,” Cruz said.
Hearn Options
What will be interesting is to see if promoter Eddie Hearn can match Andy Cruz with a world title shot in 2025 as the chances of him getting a shot against these three fighters are non-existent:
– Gervonta Davis
– Shakur Stevenson
– Keyshawn Davis
Neither of those fighters have expressed interest in fighting Andy Cruz, and that likely won’t change in 2026. Cruz is too good. It will take Turki Al-Sheikh convincing one of these fighters to agree to fight him.
Cruz can always rely on the body to dictate the fight, but as we’ve seen with them, champions can avoid dangerous mandatory challengers for years. Boxing needs to change to prevent champions from shunning their competitors as it hurts the sport.
