By Allan Fox: Unbeaten featherweight contender Mikey Garcia, the younger brother of Victor Ortiz’s trainer Danny Garcia, thinks that Ortiz found an excuse to get out of his fight against Josesito Lopez last Saturday night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Garcia questions whether Ortiz actually broke his jaw.

Ortiz lost the fight against Lopez after quitting following the end of the 9th round, complaining of a jaw injury.

Mikey Garcia said to examiner.com writer Chris Robinson “I’ve seen fighters with broken jaws; Malignaggi, Arthur Abraham, and local fighters from the areas. I think he [Ortiz] was just coming up with an excuse to stop the fight. Maybe he thought ‘That’s it, I’m not made for this sport.’ That was his way out.”

It was kind of weird the way that Ortiz’s jaw didn’t swell up like many people who suffer broken jaws. If you look at Muhammad Ali and Arthur Abraham for example; their jaws were badly swollen after they suffered broken jaws. You can’t say the same about Ortiz. It just looked like he couldn’t close his mouth.

Ortiz didn’t want to continue fighting due to the pain at the end of the 9th round. You could see Ortiz’s trainer Danny Garcia speaking to him, and it’s unclear whether he was trying to persuade Ortiz to continue fighting or what. The next you know it, Ortiz stood up and removed the towels that had been draped around his shoulders, and told the referee that he didn’t want to continue fighting.

The sad part about all of this was that Ortiz had a sizable lead, and would have likely won the fight without any problems if he had just stayed on his feet for the final three rounds. Ortiz wouldn’t have had to do much to get the win, and he could have moved forward to a September 15th fight with WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez that would have guaranteed Ortiz a huge payday, perhaps as much as $1 million dollars.

If Ortiz does have a broken jaw, it’s going to take him a considerable amount of time for the injury to heal. Once it does heal, he needs to consider fighting Lopez again so that he can prove that the loss was a fluke thing related only to his jaw injury.