By Dan Ambrose: Former WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz (31-5-2, 24 KOs) thinks Floyd Mayweather Jr. is finished with his career as of yet. Ortiz, 29, thinks Mayweather isn’t serious about his retirement and will be coming back at some point because he still has three or four fights left before his career is finished.
Ortiz feels that he should be one of Mayweather’s final fights because they have unfinished business from their fight in 2011. Ortiz was stopped in the 4th round in that fight by a cheap shot left-right from Mayweather when he wasn’t prepared to take the blows.
Mayweather retired last year after his one-sided 12 round unanimous decision win over Andre Berto in September 2015.
“Oh yeah, Mayweather’s not going to be gone,” Ortiz said to Fighthype. “I highly doubt that. He’s retired 10 times maybe? 11? He’s not gone. He’s too young. He’s still too speedy. He’s still not touched up. I strongly believe he’s got a good 3, 4 fights left in him. I should definitely be one of his stops. I’m not even sure he’s going to give me a rematch. You want to keep your record beautiful. You do that against me, it’s not going to happen,” Ortiz said.
Mayweather seems to be pretty satisfied in retirement, and I can’t see him coming back to resume his career. His problem is that if he did come back, boxing fans would expect him to fight the likes of Gennady Golovkin, Shawn Porter, Keith Thurman or Amir Khan, and Mayweather doesn’t seem interested in taking those risky fights.
If Ortiz is serious about wanting to fight Mayweather again, then he needs to get busy with his career and start fighting some quality fighters. Ortiz has only fought four times since his loss to Mayweather five years ago. Ortiz’s record in those four fights is 2-2 with defeats against Josesito Lopez and Luis Collazo. His two wins have come against Manuel Perez and Gilberto Sanchez Leon.
There’s talk that Ortiz could be facing Berto in April. That would be a rematch from their fight in April 2011. Ortiz won that fight by a 12 round decision, but he was dropped twice by Berto in rounds two and six. Berto was dropped in rounds one and six. It was one of the most exciting fights of the year. They were supposed to face each other in a rematch a long time ago, but Berto suffered an injury.
At this point, it’s no longer a fight that is meaningful. There are better fighters than Berto in the 147lb division that Ortiz should be focusing on if he wants to make enough noise to potentially interest Mayweather. If Ortiz were to beat the likes of Keith Thurman, Amir Khan, Jessie Vargas, Shawn Porter, Errol Spence Jr. or Chris Algieri, he might interest Mayweather.
The problem is Ortiz is so off the boxing map that he likely couldn’t get fights against any of those guys right now. Ortiz needs to rebuild his career by steadily fighting the best fighters he can, and fighting frequently. He should be looking to fight four to six times a year right now if he wants to make something happen with his career.
Ortiz defeated Gilberto Sanchez Leon by an eighth round knockout last December.
Comments are closed.