(Photo credit: Hogan Photos) By Dan Ambrose: Whether former WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz (29-4-2, 22 KO’s) wants to admit it to himself or not his fight against Luis Collazo (34-5, 17 KO’s) is a do-or-die type of a fight for him with his career basically being on the line when the two fighters face each other in this 12 round bout at the Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, New York, USA.
Ortiz, 27, has lost his last two fights, and if he loses this third straight fight then it’ll be almost impossible for him to climb out of that kind of hole. His promoters at Golden Boy will no doubt be looking to try anything possible to sell Ortiz to the boxing public by matching him against the type of weak opponents that they fed to Amir Khan recently in bringing him back from career downfall, but if Ortiz can’t even beat the likes of Collazo then there’s really no point in Golden Boy persisting in trying to bring Ortiz back.
It’ll be over for him. Tonight’s Collazo fight is the equivalent of Golden Boy tossing a slow under-handed pitch to Ortiz for him to try and hit it out of the park. But if he whiffs on this easy pitch, then Golden Boy might be best to cut their losses and go in another direction by cutting Ortiz loose from their promotional stable.
Ortiz looked horrible in his last fights against Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Josesito Lopez. It was bad enough that Mayweather made him look silly in their fight in September 2011, but when Josesito Lopez was able to punish Ortiz and force him to quit, it just shows you that Ortiz might not be cut out to be a fighter. Before quitting against Lopez, Ortiz quit in his fight with Marcos Maidana in a competitive fight in 2009 in losing by a 6th round stoppage. In 2010, Ortiz was dominating Lamont Peterson in the first three rounds, but when Peterson came back strong in the 4th round, Ortiz went into shutdown for the final 6 rounds of the fight and had to settle for a draw in a fight that he could have won had he fought aggressively.
Collazo will be coming after Ortiz hard tonight to see if he can force him to quit. He’s likely watched the Ortiz-Lopez and Ortiz-Maidana fight many times and seen how Ortiz comes unglued mentally when he starts getting hit hard. If Collazo can come after Ortiz hard in the first 4 rounds then chances are pretty good that Ortiz might quit again or go passive like he did in the Peterson fight.
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