Luis Ortiz TKOs Dave Allen – Results

By Boxing News - 12/10/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: #1 WBA heavyweight contender Luis “King Kong” Ortiz (27-0, 23 KOs) scored a 7th round knockout victory over domestic level fighter Dave Allen (9-2-1, 6 KOs) on Saturday night at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England. Fighting on the undercard of the Anthony Joshua vs. Eric Molina card, the 37-year-old Ortiz came on strong in the 7th round to flurry on the 24-year-old Allen until the referee stopped the contest.

Allen was taking punishment against the ropes by the southpaw Ortiz at the time of the stoppage. It was not particullarly impressive stuff from Ortiz in the first six rounds of the fight, as he looked tired, slow and very, very old. I know he’s 37, but he looked like an old 37. What was sad was how Ortiz wasn’t able to get the knockout over Allen.

Ortiz was landing shots, but he was trying to take Allen out with one punch at a time instead of throwing combinations. It appeared that Ortiz didn’t want to commit to throwing a lot of punches for fear of gassing out. He was sweating badly and taking shots from Allen in all of the rounds. It was surprisiung how often Allen was able to land his shots on Ortiz. For a guy that had so much hype about him earlier this year, it was disappointing to see him laboring against a mediocre domestic level guy like Allen.

With the fight nearing it’s end, Ortiz came alive in the early portion of the 7th round in landing some blistering left hooks and uppercuts to the head of Allen. I was surprised that Allen remained standing after getting hit by those shots, because they were huge punches. The shots seemed to take the energy out of Allen, because he stopped throwing anything back at Ortiz.

Ortiz had been getting away with low blows throughout the fight. The referee gave Ortiz a final warning in the 6th after he hit Allen with a low blow. You can argue that points should have been taken off at this point in the fight, because Allen had been hit so frequently. I think the low blows took some of the energy out of Allen. I still don’t know why the referee didn’t take a point off for these shots from Ortiz.

Despite getting the victory, Ortiz’s stock goes down with this performance. I hate to say it, but I think Matchroom Sport may have blown it by signing Ortiz. This was not an impressive performance from him. Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport was hoping that Ortiz would shine so he could help build up a fight between him and Anthony Joshua, but this was another poor performance from Ortiz in my book. It wasn’t as bad as Ortiz’s last fight against Malik Scott, but it was almost as bad. Scott would have toyed with Allen tonight. You can argue the only reason that Ortiz looked better against Allen was because he was facing a worse opponent than he had in his previous fight against Malik. I didn’t see any improvement at all in Ortiz. He still looked old, still got tired, and was still looking to get a knockout on single power shots.

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