By William Mackay: If you’re a fan of Floyd Mayweather Jr., you might like the news about referee Joe Cortez to be the guy officiating Mayweather’s September 17th fight against World Boxing Council (WBC) welterweight champion Victor Ortiz at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Cortez was the same referee that worked Mayweather’s fight against Ricky Hatton in 2007, a fight in which Hatton had problems fighting on the inside against Mayweather because of Cortez constantly breaking up the action and giving Hatton very little time to work before separating the two fighters. Hatton later pointed to Cortez as one of the factors in the fight that prevented him from excelling.
Cortez also recently worked the Amir Khan vs. Marcos Maidana fight last December, and seemed to get in Maidana’s way quite frequently in the last three rounds when Maidana was trying to work Khan over in close while Khan was badly hurt on the ropes.
The potentially bad thing about Cortez working the fight is for Ortiz, who showed a lot of inside fighting in his last fight against Andre Berto last April. Ortiz did a lot of his best work when Berto was trapped against the ropes and pretty much helpless. It’s unclear what Cortez would have done had he been the referee in that fight, but I think Berto would have had a better chance if Cortez had been working on that night.
Having a referee that separates fighters while they’re working on the inside is really a negative for good inside fighters like Ortiz. You’d like to hope that Cortez will just let Ortiz and Mayweather work on the inside without interuppting the action to separate them all the time, but looking at the Hatton-Mayweather and Maidana-Khan fights, you have to worry that Cortez could make it problematic for Ortiz to do his best work while in close.
If Ortiz can’t work on the inside, he’ll have little chance of beating Mayweather because he won’t be able to beat Mayweather by just jabbing him all night long. You have to be able to work in close to beat Mayweather. If you look at Mayweather’s two fights with Jose Luis Castillo, Mayweather had huge problems when Castillo was in close, tagging him over and over again while Mayweather was stuck on the ropes. If Cortez isn’t going to permit much inside fighting between Mayweather and Ortiz, it’s going to make it all but impossible for Ortiz to win the fight. He’ll have to come up with another strategy to get the victory, such as knocking Mayweather out. That’s not much of a strategy against Mayweather because he’s hard to hit cleanly because of his defensive skills.
I think Maidana would have beaten Khan by a knockout last year if Cortez wasn’t working the fight, because a lot of referees would have stopped the fight when Khan was staggering around in the 10th round. Cortez also chose to halt the action repeatedly when Khan was holding onto one of Maidana’s arms and getting tagged with hard shots from Maidana’s free arm. Cortez should have let Maidana keep hitting Khan until he either let go or went down instead of breaking the action over and over.
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