Berto vs. Ortiz: Will Victor quit when the going gets tough?

By Boxing News - 04/15/2011 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: We’ve already seen Victor Ortiz (28-2-2, 22 Ko’s) fall completely apart and quit in the 6th round after getting knocked down by Marcos Maidana in his 6th round knockout loss to Maidana in 2009. Next, we saw Ortiz fall apart to a slightly lesser extent in his last fight against Lamont Peterson after knocking him down twice.

Ortiz was able to get out of the fight with a 10 round draw, but it was a fight that he should have been able to win by either a knockout or by a wide decision. Ortiz is now fighting WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto (27-0, 21 KO’s) on Saturday night at the Foxwoods Casino Resort in Mashintucket, Connecticut. Berto is promising to really bring in tomorrow night to try and get Ortiz to quit again.

The question now is whether Ortiz will chose to go out on his shield or whether he’ll stand and trade and maybe get a victory over Berto. Ortiz has been making some very odd statements recently in the media, saying this according to Dan Rafael at ESPN:

“When everybody runs from you at 140, you go up to 147, and I shot to the head of the line. He’s [Marcos Maidana] running left and right, dodging me. He sees me in his nightmares. When he gets the courage and comes out of the closet, he can meet me at 147. I had just one slipup against Maidana. That’s the difference between then and now. If Maidana wants to end his career, he should move up to 147. You say I haven’t fought a puncher. Maidana was considered the toughest puncher at 140 and 147, and he couldn’t put me down.”

Ortiz seems as if he doesn’t have full recollection of what went down in the Maidana fight. He was knocked down in the Maidana fight, two times in fact. I don’t know what Ortiz is thinking about by saying some of those things because Maidana clearly beat him and hasn’t been avoiding him at all. There just hasn’t been any demand for Maidana to fight Ortiz again.

It’s been really a case of Ortiz needing to get the Maidana fight behind him to show boxing fans that he’s not a quitter. Thus far, Ortiz technically hasn’t been beaten since that fight, but he sure didn’t look impressive in his last fight when Peterson began to take the fight to him. Ortiz responded by running when Peterson turned up the heat him. And if Ortiz thinks it was bad with Peterson going after him, then he’s going to be in for a big shock tomorrow night when Berto starts putting hands on him. Hopefully, Ortiz doesn’t quit and is willing to fight to the bitter end but I’m not so sure he will.



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