By Chris Williams: WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz will have to beat undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. not once but twice in order to be able to move on to a potential huge money fight against World Boxing Organization (WBO) welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao of Top Rank Promotions.
Ortiz sees it going that way, which could be a pipe dream for him. If he beats Mayweather Jr. twice, it would mean that Ortiz was a lot better than many people thought he was and it’s difficult to see Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, wanting to risk putting his gravy train fighter Pacquiao in with Ortiz under those conditions. Besides that, Ortiz fights for Golden Boy Promotions, and that would probably be enough on its own to disqualify Ortiz for a big money fight against Pacquiao.
In an article by Michael Marley at examiner.com, Ortiz said “I’ll be the one fighting Manny Pacquiao next year…I plan on being a world champion for 15 years. I am definitely going to beat Mayweather.”
Ortiz will be fighting Mayweather on September 17th, but his chances of success are pretty slim against the much more highly skilled Mayweather. Ortiz’s best chance of success is to trap Mayweather along the ropes and hope he can keep him pinned there like former WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto was in his 12 round decision loss to Ortiz in April. However, Mayweather doesn’t have conditioning problems like Berto showed against Ortiz, and he fights a lot better off the ropes than Berto.
Mayweather probably won’t go along with the program of staying on the ropes for any length of time. Ortiz has problems against Berto when the fight was in the center of the ring where Berto’s much faster hands gave Ortiz problems. Mayweather will be clever enough and in good enough condition to keep the fight in the middle of the ring. Ortiz won’t do well against Mayweather unless he can mug him on the ropes.
Ortiz sounds a lot like the idealistic Amir Khan with his picturing a bright future. The reality is Ortiz will likely lose his WBC title against Mayweather, and thus not even hold his title for more than six months rather, let alone 15 years.
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