Arum: Mayweather hit Ortiz with a cheap shot; No rematch necessary

By Boxing News - 09/21/2011 - Comments

Image: Arum: Mayweather hit Ortiz with a cheap shot; No rematch necessaryBy Dan Ambrose: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum was appalled by Floyd Mayweather’s two-punch combination he landed to stop WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz last weekend, calling it a cheap shot. Arum also wasn’t impressed with the job that referee Joe Cortez did in the fight.

“That was a cheap f****** shot,” Arum said to RingTV. “And a referee [Joe Cortez] that didn’t know what he was doing. What do you mean he told timekeeper ‘Time in?’. Shouldn’t he have told the fighters time in? It was horrible for boxing. Horrible.”

It did look as if Cortez lost control of the fight when he took his eyes off the two fighters right before Mayweather nailed Ortiz when his hands were down by his sides. You can call it legal but it looked like a cheap retaliation shot and it didn’t put Mayweather in a good light. Winning like that makes Mayweather look really bad. Some of his fans are no doubt slapping him on the back, feeling it’s good to do anything to win. But they can’t feel good about a fight that ends like that. If you win a fight by default because you hit a guy who’s not prepared to fight, where is the victory in that? All it proves is that you can hurt someone that’s not expecting to get hit. Given that fans payed $55 to watch this fight, it leaves a sour taste in the minds of many fans, perhaps even the ones that are saying Mayweather did the right thing. Would they rather see ending like that or would they have preferred that Mayweather beaten Ortiz in a more traditional manner?

As for a rematch between Mayweather and Ortiz, Arum is dead set against it, saying “Are you f****** crazy? Who would buy a ticket to that fight?…It’s like selling ice in the winter.”

Arum feels that Ortiz was looking for a way out of the fight, which is why he headbutted Mayweather in the 4th round when things were looking bleak for him. Arum thinks Ortiz came out looking bad in this fight, looking as if he wanted to quit again. Ortiz quit before in the past against Marcos Maidana when the going got tough, and there were a lot of boxing fans that thought he would quit again against Mayweather.



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