(Photo credit: PBC)By Dan Ambrose: Former WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz (31-5-2, 24 KOs) appears to have a major chip on his shoulders due to the boxing media doubting him and his career due to his struggles he’s had in the last five years since he was stopped by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in their fight in September 2011.
Ortiz, 29, will be fighting a rematch this Saturday night against Andre Berto (30-4, 23 KOs) in a fight televised Premier Boxing Champions on Fox at the StubHub Center in Carson, California. Ortiz figures that he’ll beat the 32-year-old Berto to prove the media wrong, and then he’ll win another world title to get back on top again.
Once he wins the title, Ortiz says that he won’t give the media the interviews they want because they weren’t there for him and they didn’t believe in him.
You can understand why many people in the media have forgotten about Ortiz and pretty much written him off. Ortiz’s losses in the last five years to Luis Collazo and Josesito Lopez were enough for fans to see Ortiz as not having the talent to compete with the best. Those two fighters aren’t major players in the 140 and 147lb divisions, so it made Ortiz look even worse with him losing to those fighters.
“Come the 30th, I’ll prove once again why I beat Berto the first time,” said Ortiz to Fighthype. “I know what I’m here to do on April 30th, thanks to the media writing me off. Again, they just did me a favor. They gave me that fire back, the fire you guys claim I don’t have, the fire that is supposed to be in the acting world only. A bunch of people are just full of [expletive], man. They don’t know what I go through on a daily. You know what I got from the media. A nice middle finger. I’m going to be back on top in no time. I know where I belong. The media always writes me off. The whole training camp not a fly stopped by my gym…I guarantee you, once I’m crowned again, they’ll be, ‘Oh, can we talk again?’ I’ll be, ‘I’m kind of busy. I’m shooting a movie. Sorry, guys. I’ve got to go,’” said Ortiz.
It seems that Ortiz is only going to be hurting himself if he decides to shutout the media because he obviously needs publicity for his career, which is at the point where it’s on the verge of imploding.
A loss to Berto on Saturday night could effectively put Ortiz in a bad place where he might not ever come back from. Ortiz points out that he’s had injuries and the media doesn’t see these things. It doesn’t matter what injuries Ortiz has had. If he can’t beat guys like Collazo and Lopez, then he doesn’t belong with the best.
A win over Berto on Saturday night for the 29-year-old Ortiz won’t mean much in the big scheme of things because Berto is seen as a guy with an inflated ranking with the World Boxing Council, who for some reason has him ranked at number #3 with their organization.
Berto looks like a shot fighter in my view, and he’s lost three out of his last five fights. Beating Berto is no big deal. The WBC will likely give Ortiz and inflated ranking as well if he beats Berto on Saturday, but that doesn’t mean that Ortiz deserves the ranking. Ortiz will still likely be trounced when he faces someone good like Errol Spence Jr. or even Danny Garcia, who many people see as a paper champion with limited talent.
Ortiz needs to beat Berto and try and stay healthy enough to stay active. Fighting once a year isn’t going to get the job done for Ortiz. He missed an entire year from 2014 after his fight against Manuel Perez until coming back last December against Gilberto Sanchez Leon.
If Ortiz is serious about his career, then he’s going to need to fight better opposition than the 32-year-old Berto because he’s not going anywhere if this is the level of opposition he’s going to be fighting.
A fight against Berto would have been a good thing if Ortiz was fighting him four years ago, but Berto is now seen by many fans as a fighter from yesterday who is no longer relevant. So instead of fighting the likes of Berto, Ortiz needs to be fighting Errol Spence, Shawn Porter or Amir Khan.
Ortiz should forget about fighting any of the world champions because he doesn’t rate and he won’t likely beat any of them. Ortiz has missed too much time and he likely won’t be able to get back to the level he was at back in 2011. Even then, Ortiz was a flawed fighter that beat another flawed fighter in Berto for the WBC paper title.