Oscar De La Hoya: Victor Ortiz should call it a day

By Boxing News - 01/31/2014 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions is recommending that the birthday body Victor Ortiz (29-5-2, 22 KO’s) think about hanging up his gloves and going in another direction following his crushing 2nd round defeat last Thursday night against the light-hitting Luis Collazo (35-5, 18 KO’s) at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Ortiz, by the way, turns 27 today. What a day to celebrate his birthday.

De La Hoya has the power to pull the trigger on Ortiz and release him from his contract with Golden Boy Promotions. However, De La Hoya might have to convince Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer to do that, because Schaefer might want to keep Ortiz around as long as possible in order to mix and match him with his other Golden Boy fighters like Zab Judah, Robert Guerrero, Lucas Matthysse, Adrien Broner, Lamont Peterson, Devon Alexander and Danny Garcia.

Obviously, Schaefer couldn’t put Ortiz in against any of the world champions for now, but if he puts Ortiz on the same diet of opponents that Amir Khan has been fighting recently then there’s a chance that he can build him up in the eyes of his loyal fans. Ortiz needs 5-6 weak opponents without much power or size so that he can beat up on them and get ranked up high enough to be put in against one of the champions at 147 or 154.

Ortiz was coming off of a 19 month layoff when he returned to the ring last night against Collazo. The wise thing for Ortiz to have done given his long layoff would have been for him to take things slowly, use his jab, and circle the ring a lot to pick his spots to land shots. But instead of doing that, Ortiz fought Collazo in the similar way that he did in his loss to Marcos Maidana in 2009.

Ortiz fought like he literally had no sense in his head. He was putting everything he had in his shots in what looked like an attempt to score an impressive one-punch knockout. The problem is that Ortiz doesn’t have that kind of power, so he was really wasting his time. What Ortiz did was leave himself open for Collazo’s counter shots, and big hooks on the inside. Collazo might not be a puncher when throwing shots from the outside, but he can land with decent power on the inside, which is where Ortiz found himself on numerous occasions after he’d throw one of his shots and fall forward straight into the line of fire for Collazo.



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