Victor Ortiz: I’m ready to get my title back

By Boxing News - 01/22/2014 - Comments

ortiz2By Dan Ambrose: Former WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz (29-4-2, 22 KO’s) will be staging a comeback on January 30th against Luis Collazo (34-5, 17 KO’s) in a 10 round tune-up bout for the soon to be 27-year-old Ortiz at the Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, New York, USA. Ortiz just finished burning up a year and a half of his career by staying out of the ring since suffering a broken jaw in his fight against light welterweight Josesito Lopez in June of 2012.

Ortiz expects to get his WBC title back, which means he’s counting on getting a rematch against Floyd Mayweather Jr. because he’s the one that has the WBC 147 lb. title in his possession.

It’s probably not the smartest idea for Ortiz to throw away that much of his career, but he’s obviously counting on being able to start in where he left off. Unfortunately it rarely goes like that for fighters who voluntarily stay out of the ring for nearly 2 years like Ortiz just did.

“Now I’m back and I’m all in, I never left, it’s not a come back,” Ortiz said. “I’m ready to get the title back. It disgusted me to watch boxing. There were so many fighters who didn’t belong there. I could beat all of them. Everything happens for a reason. I took a break and let my jaw heal and had different opportunities come up that I took. Why not?”

Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer says he’s going to put Ortiz in some big fights in 2014 and beyond. Ortiz is going to need to win those fights if he wants to have any chance of getting a rematch against Mayweather. He can’t afford to get beaten again by a fighter like Josesito Lopez. Ortiz needs to be able to chop those fighters down because he won’t go far if he can’t even beat guys of that level.

The way that Ortiz lost in getting halted by Mayweather in 2011, it’s going to be difficult for him to come all the way back to where he briefly was before. Ortiz will need to avoid injuries, he’ll need to stay busy and he can’t afford to quit anymore like he did in his losses to Lopez and Marcos Maidana.

Collazo is someone that Ortiz should be able to beat without too many problems even if he is rusty. Collazo stopped fighting good opposition after his loss to Andre Berto in 2009. Collazo has fought 6 times since the loss to Berto, and won 5 of those fights. His one loss during that time came to Freddy Hernandez in 2011.



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