By Allan Fox: Bryant Jennings (19-1, 10 KOs) will be facing unbeaten WBA World interim heavyweight champion Luis “The Real King Kong” Ortiz (23-0, 20 KOs) this Saturday night on December 19th on HBO Championship Boxing from the Turning Stone Casino in Verona, New York.
This fight could have a surprise ending no matter which of these two fighters lose. Jennings has looked very good since he turned pro five years ago in 2010. His only loss occurred at the hands of former IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko last May.
That wasn’t much of a loss for Jennings because Wladimir did little more than jab and move around the ring all night long to try and avoid the punches by the aggressor Jennings.
“He’s [Ortiz] just a guy who his own promoter is infatuated over, but nobody else is,” Jennings said to fightnews.com “They invested in him, so they want to pump him up.”
Ortiz, 36, is up there in age and he’s getting a really late start for someone that old. He’s still faced anyone even slightly good at this point in his career, and we don’t know how he’ll perform against Jennings if he can’t land his power shots. Ortiz’s best wins have come against Monte Barrett, Lateef Kayode and Matias Ariel Vidondo.
“This is Ortiz’ first real fight as a professional,” Jennings said. “This guy hasn’t seen a real fighter like me yet. Deep experience as an amateur doesn’t mean you will have a successful professional career. He still has to go out and prove himself.”
Ortiz definitely has punching power and a lot of different tools to get the job done against Jennings. If Jennings doesn’t watch out in this fight, he could get stopped early on. But if Jennings can take Ortiz deep into the fight, he might be able to expose the aging Cuban’s lack of stamina.
When you’ve got an older fighter like Ortiz, who hasn’t been going deep into fights, there’s a good chance that he could fade badly if taken deep for the first time by Jennings. Ortiz was an excellent amateur in Cuba for many years. The thing of it is he didn’t fight long fights. It was all short 3 to 4 round fights.
As a pro, Ortiz has been knocking everyone out within three to four rounds like he was doing as an amateur. If Jennings can take him deep into the fight, and then take the fight to him, we could see a stoppage win for Jennings. But for that to happen, Jennings is going to need to fight with more aggression than he did against Klitschko. He didn’t look that offensively skilled in that fight.
Jennings has wins over Artur Szpilk, Mike Perez, Andrey Fedosov, Bowie Tupou, Siarhei Liakhovich and Maurice Byarm. Those are all good B-level heavyweights. Ortiz has superior punching power and offensive skills than those fighters do. However, Ortiz isn’t used to getting hit back by a guy with the reach that Jennings possesses, so this is going to be a new experience for Ortiz in this fight if he can’t get a quick knockout like he’s been having since he turned pro.
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