By Dan Ambrose: Former WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz (30-5-2, 23 KOs) says he’s ready to sign the contract for a fight against Brandon Rios (33-2-1, 24 KOs) whenever he’s ready.
Rios defeated Mike Alvarado last Saturday night by a 12 round decision in their fight on HBO. After the fight, Rios and his trainer Robert Garcia spoke of wanting to possibly face Ortiz next, among other fighters like Ruslan Provodnikov, Lucas Matthysse and Tim Bradley.
Ortiz got wind of the news about Rios being potentially interested in facing him, and he took to twitter, saying “Brandon Rios always been my punching bag since we were kids! Wheres Where’s the contract, Brandon Rios?”
While Ortiz is interested in facing Rios next, the feelings aren’t quite mutual. Rios is looking it up to his manager Cameron Duncan as far as whom he faces next.
Rios doesn’t seem to have much of a preference about who he fights next. “I’m back again and I’m here to stay,” Rios said to esnewsreporting.com. “I really don’t like that guy. I’ll make him quit,” Rios said about Ortiz.
Ortiz recently ended a three-fight losing streak in defeating light welterweight Manuel Perez by a 3rd round stoppage last December in Las Vegas. It was a decent performance from Ortiz, but the opponent wasn’t nearly good enough to get a good gauge in whether he’s improved or not.
Before that, Ortiz had lost to Luis Collazo, Josesito Lopez and Floyd Mayweather Jr all by knockouts. The stoppage losses to Mayweather and Lopez were quit jobs by Ortiz. Technically, Ortiz didn’t quit against Mayweather, but he dropped his guard in the 4th round after head-butting Mayweather. This enabled Mayweather to hit Ortiz while he was defenseless in scoring a knockout.
Garcia doesn’t know if HBO would be willing to buy a fight between Rios and Ortiz. It’s probably a long shot to be honest. Ortiz, as good as he once was, it likely little more than Alvarado 2.0 at best.
If HBO purchases the Ortiz-Rios fight they could wind up with a similar mismatch as the Rios vs. Alvarado 3 fight last Saturday night. That’s really not good television when you have one fighter getting blown out in 2 to 3 rounds and then quits on his stool.
With Ortiz, the potential would be there for Ortiz to quit again. Will HBO be willing to take that risk? I don’t know. They wasted good money on the Rios-Alvarado 3 fight, so maybe they’ll be willing to dump cash on similar fight between Rios and Ortiz. I think HBO would prefer to see Rios face the likes of Lucas Matthysse, Bradley or Provodnikov, because those are far better fights on paper.
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