Brandon Rios wants Victor Ortiz fight

By Boxing News - 06/08/2015 - Comments

rios99By Dan Ambrose: Having no luck in trying to negotiate a fight against IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook, former WBA lightweight champion Brandon Rios (33-2-1, 24 KOs) is interested in facing former WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz (30-5-2, 23 KOs) next if he’s game.

The two fighters have been exchanging words back and forth with one another, and wants to get the 28-year-old Ortiz in the ring so that he can shut him up once and for all. However, Ortiz is recovering from a hand injury, and it’s not likely that he’ll be able to face Rios this summer unless the injury heals quickly.

“I’ll take whoever is there like Ortiz,” Rios said to Fighthype about his next fight. “Victor Ortiz says he wants to fight me in the ring or the street. You know you don’t want me in the street. I’ll [expletive] him up. He’s trying to make himself sound tough, but I’ll [expletive] him up. I used to make him cry a lot.”

Rios-Ortiz would be a good fight because neither of them have won a big fight for many years, and it would give them a chance for them to prove who the better fighter is and give them both a good payday. Ideally, Rios would like to fight Kell Brook for his IBF 147lb title, but Brook and his promoter are reportedly playing the A-side to the hilt, and making it difficult to negotiate the fight. Rios obviously isn’t going to sit around and accept all the terms that are being offered to him. He’ll move on if there’s no give in the negotiations and instead look to get another fight like against Ortiz.

Ortiz’s star has really faded since he was stopped in the 4th round by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2011. It’s hard to tell whether the loss took something out of Ortiz, or if it’s a case of him having made so much money in the Mayweather fight that it’s taken away some of the drive that he once had. Whatever the problem is, Ortiz has lost 2 out of his last 3 fights in defeats to Luis Collazo and Josesito Lopez. The loss to Lopez was a really big blow to Ortiz’s career because if he’d won the fight, he would have gotten a big money fight against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Instead, Ortiz had to settle for fighting Collazo in a fight in which he was stopped in the 2nd round last year in January. In Ortiz’s last fight, he defeated light welterweight Manuel Perez by a 3rd round stoppage last December. Ortiz showed in that fight that he still has major power, and can be dangerous for anyone when he’s letting his hands go.

“He sounds stupid. He looks punch drunk or something, because that mother [expletive] sounds stupid,” Rios said. “I saw him a couple of times in the street and he tried to shake my hand like a [expletive]. I’ll take that fight in a heartbeat. I already called him out, but he didn’t want none.”

It would be interesting if Rios and Ortiz could face each other because it would be one of those crossroads fights where the loser sinks down into 2nd tier likely on a permanent basis, while the winner moves forwards towards other big fights in the future.



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