By Scott Gilfoid: Domestic level heavyweight David Allen (9-1-1, 6 KOs) is volunteering to fight unbeaten former WBA interim heavyweight champion Luis ‘King Kong’ Ortiz (26-0, 22 KOs) in his next fight on December 10 at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England. Ortiz’s promoter Eddie Hearn has added the 37-year-old Ortiz to the card in order to help create interest in a possible fight between Ortiz and IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua in 2017.
Hearn recently signed Ortiz, who had previously been promoted by Golden Boy Promotions. Hearn is hoping that Ortiz will look good in this fight so that he can start getting British boxing fans excited about him. Hearn’s efforts and creating interest in Ortiz failed last Saturday night when he plodded to a boring 12 round unanimous decision win over the fleet of foot American Malik Scott in Monte Carlo.
Ortiz looked slow and old in that fight. Allen says that Ortiz looks older than the real 70-year-old King Kong from the 1933 movie. The movie is actually 83-years-old.
Allen said this to skysports.com about him volunteering to fight Ortiz on December 10:
“After seeing him on Saturday night, I fancy the job even more, and I feel a lot of other heavyweights will fancy the job now,” Allen said about wanting to fight Ortiz. ”He looks older than the real King Kong, so why am I going to fear a 70-year-old man?”
Ortiz did look VERY OLD in the Malik Scott fight, and you have to wonder why Hearn bothered to sign him to his Matchroom Sport stable. Ortiz has won a lot of fights, but there’s been no substance with his opposition. Before signing with Matchroom, Ortiz had fought a lot of easy opponents. Ortiz’s toughest opponents in his career are Bryant Jennings, Malik Scott and Tony Thompson. Ortiz didn’t look good in any of those fights in my estimation. Jennings and Thompson were both able to land shots on Ortiz. Malik even landed punches as well.
Hearn could be taking a BIG, BIG risk if he matches Allen with Ortiz, because it could be a real stinker. Who can forget about Allen failed to let his hands go in his 10 round fight against Dillian Whyte on July 30 last Summer. Despite the fact that Whyte was only punching with one hand, Allen fought with his back against the ropes for the full 10 rounds of the fight, and did little more than take shots and cover up. Whyte won the fight by a lopsided 10 round unanimous decision by the scores 99-91, 100-91 and 100-90. The 24-year-old Allen looked too timid to throw punches in that fight.
If Allen wasn’t willing to let his hands go against Whyte, then what makes you think he would let his hands go against Ortiz? Coming events cast their shadows before. I don’t see how Allen can be anything other than what he’s been in the past. He already showed his face against Whyte by not throwing punches. It’s not as if Allen has fought a bunch of times since his loss to Whyte and shown that it was just a fluke thing for him to fight passively.
Allen hasn’t fought since then. If Hearn signs Allen up for the Ortiz fight, he could be inviting a great deal of criticism from boxing fans. For one, Allen is a domestic level fighter, not a world class top contender like Ortiz. Further, Allen was totally schooled by a very average Dillian Whyte in his last fight. This wasn’t a prime version of Whyte. This was the Whyte, who had surgery on his left shoulder last year, and isn’t using his left hand like he used to. Whyte only needed his right hand to beat Allen and beat him with ease.
“I don’t think he’s what he’s hyped up to be,” said Allen about Ortiz. “I’ll stand in front of him and see what he’s about. I’ll stand and trade, because I can’t do anything else – that’s the problem. If I could box, maybe I would do that.”
Allen says he’s learning some Spanish in case he gets the fight against the Spanish speaking Ortiz, who comes from Cuba, and doesn’t speak much English. I don’t think it matters much even if Allen does learn some Spanish. It’s still a bad match-up in my view. Hearn blabbered after the fight that he would find someone that will come to win. If Dave Allen is what Hearn was talking about, then that’s pretty disappointing, because I expected at least a contender for Ortiz to fight instead of a domestic level guy like Allen, who is coming off of a dreadful showing against Whyte in his last fight.
“These guys have got to come to win and we will find someone on December 10 who will come to win, and then you will see the best of Luis Ortiz,” said Hearn to skysports.com.
I think Hearn is going to wind up getting laughed at by boxing fans if he matches Ortiz against Allen, and the fight winds up even worse than Ortiz’s last fight against Malik Scott. It’s bad enough that Hearn made the dreadful mistake of choosing Malik Scott for Ortiz to fight instead of a live body. But it would look horrible if Hearn follows that up with an even worse mismatch by putting Ortiz in with Allen.
I thought Hearn was thinking of upgrading Ortiz’s opposition after the disaster from last Saturday night. But Allen has got to be seen as a step down from Malik Scott. If you put Allen and Malik Scott inside the ring, Allen is going to lose that fight and lose badly in my view. That’s why you don’t make the mistake in the first place in matching a guy like Ortiz up with Allen – or Malik Scott.
I would love to be a fly on the wall when/if Hearn calls Allen up to announce the news to him that he’s selected him to fight Luis Ortiz on December 10. Allen will likely be jumping out of his boots at getting picked out for the fight, because as he says, he sees Ortiz as a “70-year-old” man. I don’t know if Allen seriously believes he can beat Ortiz, but if he does, then it shows you how bad he must have looked in his eyes in the Malik fight.
I have to admit, Ortiz looked awfully old in that fight. He looked like a guy with excellent boxing skills, but at the same time, he looked slow on his feet. Ortiz’s hand speed wasn’t that bad. He was throwing only one punch at a time. Ortiz could have made up for his slow feet if he’d thrown sustained combinations when he would get near Scott.
Instead of looking to KO Scott with a single shot every time, Ortiz needed to get in front of him and throw eight to ten shots in a row without stopping. If he’d done that, he probably would have knocked Scott out in the 1st round. the fact that Ortiz DIDN’T do that suggests to me that there might be some age related reason why he wasn’t letting his hands go. When I look at old tape of Luis Ortiz during his amateur days, he was able to throw combinations. Of course, Ortiz would gas out too. Look at Ortiz’s fight against Russian Roman Romanchuk in the 2005 World Cup. Ortiz fought well in the first two rounds, but then got tired and started to take big shots and wound up losing the fight.