Should Ortiz Fight Maidana Again?

By Matt Stein: I personally think that light welterweight contender Victor Ortiz (24-2-1, 19 KOs) is a great fighter, possibly as good as his promoter Oscar De La Hoya thinks he is, but I’m not so sure that Ortiz has the chin or the intestinal fortitude to beat knockout artist Marcos Maidana (26-1, 25 KO’s) in a rematch if it comes to that.

Maidana, 25, got off the deck three times in the first two rounds to drop Ortiz twice and pretty much forcing him to quit in the 6th round of their bout on Saturday night at the Staples Center, in Los Angeles. The bout was stopped after Ortiz was dropped along the ropes in the 6th round by a big left hook from Maidana. After Ortiz got to his feet, he shook his head at the referee as if he had seen enough.

The referee probably should have stopped it right there, but he instead took Ortiz over to the ringside doctor who after examining Ortiz’s cut over his right eye, advised that the fight be stopped. It was kind of silly, because Ortiz was finished already by the punches from Maidana, and all this did was allow Ortiz to save face by not having the fight stopped after the knockdown or having it go a little while longer so that Maidana could have finished him off with more shots.

Ortiz wouldn’t have lasted more than another 15 to 30 seconds of Maidana had been allowed to continue pummel him. And I don’t see Ortiz’s cut having anything to do with the outcome of this fight. It was the power shots from Maidana that hurt Ortiz and wore him down in the 5th and 6th rounds.

Ortiz may have looked strong in the 1st and 2nd rounds in which he knocked Maidana down three times, but Ortiz couldn’t keep fighting at this pace for long, because Maidana kept firing back at him with huge shots that seemed to take the life out of Ortiz.

After the fight, Ortiz seemed to have an odd angle on the bout, saying “I was hurt. I’m not going to go out on my back or lay down for nobody. I’m going to stop while I’m ahead. That way I can speak when I’m older. I’m young, but I don’t feel that I deserve to be beat up like this. I have a lot of thinking to do.” You can say that again.

If Ortiz does eventually fight a rematch with Maidana, then he’s going to have to change his outlook on fighting, because Maidana won’t likely be mowed down in the first couple of rounds at the first sign of adversity like many of Ortiz’s prior opponents.

The only way that Ortiz can beat a fighter like Maidana is if he’s willing to risk everything and take an awful lot of punishment in the process of taking Maidana deep to try and beat him. De La Hoya says that Ortiz wants to fight a rematch with Maidana. I bet.

After the fight, Ortiz said that he failed to listen to his corner who were telling him to box Maidana from the outside. However, I don’t think that Ortiz could beat Maidana even if he ran around the ring all night throwing nothing but jabs.

Maidana already showed that he can neutralize that kind of strategy in his fight with Andriy Kotelnik, the World Boxing Association light welterweight champion, who beat Maidana by a very questionable 12-round split decision in February 2009.

Kotelnik took serious punishment from Maidana in the fight, especially in the later rounds when Kotelnik could no longer run and was trapped into fighting Maidana at close quarters. Kotelnik got beat up in the process and should have lost the fight by at least three rounds from what I saw of the fight.

Kotelnik is a classic boxer with one of the best jabs in the light welterweight division and who fights almost exclusively on the outside. If Kotelnik wasn’t able to keep Maidana bottled up on the outside, then I can’t see Ortiz doing any better.

The reality is Maidana is probably just too strong for Ortiz to beat, and if De La Hoya is crazy enough to try and put Ortiz back in there with Maidana, then you will in all likelihood see Ortiz getting knocked out just like last time.

If you look at the 5th and 6th rounds, Maidana was just too strong for Ortiz and was breaking him down with his huge punches. Maidana was just getting warmed up at the time that the fight was stopped and didn’t even look close to being tired. It would have been scary to see what he would have done to Ortiz had he been able to pound on him for another six rounds.

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