(Photo Credit: Alex Menendez – HoganPhotos/Golden Boy Promotions) By Tim Fletcher: WBA interim heavyweight champion Luis Ortiz (24-0, 21 KOs) put on quite the show last night in stopping a very good fighter in Bryant Jennings (19-2, 10 KOs) in the seventh round of their contest on HBO. Jennings was not only put on the canvas for the first time in his pro career, but also knocked out for the first time in his career as well.
As far as punch stats go, they were pretty even in terms of the punches landed. The main difference between the two fighters was the amount of power behind Ortiz’s punches compared to Jennings. The 36-year-old Ortiz was landing with a lot more power on his shots, and not surprisingly, he was the one who was doing the most damage of the two.
Jennings was hurt at least three separate times in the fight in getting hurt in the 1st, 3rd and 7th rounds.
Jennings landed 146 of 327 punches for a connect percentage of 42%, according to CompuBox stats. Ortiz connected on 128 of 441 punches for 29%. Jennings was able to land with a higher connect percentage because many of his punches were thrown while he was in close and could not miss from that range.
Ortiz had problems landing his punches at times because of the head movement that Jennings was using. He made it difficult for Ortiz to land when the two of them were on the outside.
“I told my trainers that I saw a lot of flaws. One of the things I noticed was that he [Jennings] likes to lean forward a lot. So I said after the third round that I was going to fight him on the inside, and the uppercuts are going to work,” Ortiz said via Fight News.
Ortiz was not doing much with his uppercuts on the inside until the seventh round. Before that, Ortiz’s uppercuts in close did not have enough power on them to get the attention of Jennings. Ortiz did well with his uppercuts while Jennings was charging forward to try to land. Ortiz was able to time Jennings and nail him with heavy uppercuts.
Jennings took the punches well though for the most part with the exception of the first and third rounds. Jennings was clearly hurt in those rounds and lucky to have survived. Ortiz tried to KO Jennings in both rounds, but he was not able to place his punches well enough to finish him. You have to give credit to Jennings for the head movement and the clinching he did after getting hurt.
“I was a little bit surprised (that he got up from the knockdown), but I knew that he wasn’t right mentally. I didn’t want a TKO, I wanted to knock him out,” Ortiz said. “Line them up. You line them up, I’ll fight them all. I invite everyone to come fight me on HBO.”
Unfortunately, for Ortiz, he might not have a great championship reign even if he does eventually win the WBA “regular” heavyweight title. It’s not likely he’ll get the big name fighters to face him on HBO, and by the time he does fight some of the younger heavyweights, he might be too old to win. It’s unfortunate that Ortiz is up there in age in about to turn 37, because he could run out of time before he ever gets a big fight.
Wladimir Klitschko held world titles for 11 years as a heavyweight champion, and the biggest fights in all those years for him were David Haye, Tyson Fury and Alexander Povetkin. Nevertheless, it took many years before he got those fights. Ortiz does not have five years to wait around for his first big fight like Wladimir did.
“Obviously we are going to go for the biggest fight for him,” said Golden Boy Promotions matchmaker Eric Gomez via Fight News. “Whatever the biggest fight is, he’s the Interim WBA champion, we’re going to pursue the regular champion. When I get back home, I am going to sit down with Oscar, sit down with the team and discuss it. Then we will go to HBO and see what we can get done.”
Ortiz will not be getting a fight against WBA “regular” heavyweight champion Ruslan Chagaev yet, because he has a title defense coming up against Lucas Browne. The options are somewhat limited for Ortiz right now other than him fighting one of the many contenders in the division.
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