By Eric Thomas: One can’t look at the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Victor Ortiz fight without wondering what happened to Ortiz mentally for him to suddenly lose his focus and decide to headbutt Mayweather the way he did in the 4th round.

That seemed almost like Ortiz was begging to be disqualified. But what came after that was even more suspicious when Ortiz put his hands down after the referee Joe Cortez resumed the action after taking away a point from Ortiz for the headbutt.

Ortiz went up to Mayweather and hugged him for the second after the fight was started and then failed to raise his hands to protect himself after Mayweather nailed him with a shot. At that point, I thought Ortiz was hoping that the referee would step in and save him from Mayweather. It looked like he either ranked Mayweather to lose a point or get disqualified. It didn’t look like Ortiz wanted to fight anymore.

Ortiz was getting dominating by Mayweather from the 2nd round on, and it was getting really bad by the 4th round with Mayweather hitting Ortiz at will with shots. By this time, Mayweather was no longer just pot shoting Ortiz, he was opening up with sustained flurries and connecting well. Ortiz’s offense, such as it was, was limited to rare attacks in which he mostly missed with his big punches. He looked completely out of sorts and was in full retreat much of the time, circling the ring to keep from getting hit by Mayweather.

When you take in the fact that Ortiz seemed to quit mentally against Marcos Maidana in 2009, and look at the Mayweather fight, Ortiz seemed to be pulling another quit job in this fight. Personally, I think he mentally quit by headbutting Mayweather and then keeping his hands down when the action was resumed. Ortiz got a good payday out of it, and will likely make as much as $5 million for the loss. That’s good money. He may have saved himself a bad beating by taking the easy way out.