By Jason Kim: Juan Manuel Marquez, a former victim of Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2009, is picking Mayweather to beat WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz this Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Marquez, 38, says he thinks Mayweather has too much talent for Ortiz to deal with and he thinks it’s going to be a clear win for Mayweather in this fight.
Ortiz got the Mayweather fight based on his win over former WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto last April in a close 12 round decision. Ortiz fought good at times in that bout, he was knocked down twice and likely would have lost the fight had Berto not run out of gas after the 6th round. Ortiz struggled in his fight before that against Lamont Peterson last year in December.
Ortiz dominated early in the fight, knocking Peterson down twice, but in the second half Peterson fought well and drove Ortiz back with hard jabs and combinations. In the final rounds, Ortiz fought as if he didn’t want to get hit and gave away the crucial last rounds of the fight. Mayweather won’t fade like Berto did, and we we’ll probably see Ortiz backing off when he starts getting hit a lot.
Ortiz talks a good game but he’s got a strong self preservation instinct about him. When Mayweather turns it on, Ortiz will want to survive and will try to box Mayweather. That’s a fight that Ortiz can win. He won’t be able to out-box a skilled fighter like Mayweather, and will quickly fall behind in the fight to the point where he’ll need a knockout to win in the last rounds.
Ortiz is a good puncher, but he won’t knock out Mayweather. For Ortiz to have a chance to KO Mayweather, he would have to go all out in the first three rounds to try and end it. Ortiz was given advice by Oscar De La Hoya on how to beat Floyd, and that advice likely will be for Ortiz to jab Mayweather. That’s the worse thing he can do, because it will cause Ortiz to go away from his power game for too long and by the time he does try and take Mayweather out, he’ll likely be too tired to accomplish that task.
Comments are closed.