Luis Ortiz vs. Malik Scott tonight

By Boxing News - 11/12/2016 - Comments

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By Allan Fox: Undefeated heavyweight contender Luis ‘King Kong’ Ortiz (25-0, 22 KOs) has an important fight tonight against Malik Scott (38-2-1, 13 KOs) in a fight on HBO Boxing in Monte Carlo. The fight has high stakes for Ortiz, because a win against Scott will move him within striking distance of a title fight against fellow Matchroom Sport fighter IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (17-0, 17 KOs) in 2017.

Their promoter Eddie Hearn is saying that he wants to match Ortiz and Joshua against each other in 10 to 12 months if everything goes right with both fighters winning their fights.
Malik Scott, 36, was selected to give Ortiz a good fight, but he wasn’t picked out with the thought that he had the chance of beating him.

However, there’s still a potential of the 6’3” Ortiz losing the fight, because he did not look all that great in his last two fights against Tony Thompson and Bryant Jennings. There were moments where Ortiz would look very good followed by moments where he was vulnerable.

Thompson, 45, says he wasn’t that impressed with Ortiz, as he feels that he would have beaten him if he had a full training camp to get ready for the fight. Thompson says he only had two weeks to train for the Ortiz fight.

“I just didn’t see the ‘special, and although everyone will say that’s sour grapes, I’m a truthful guy,” said Thompson to skysports.com about the Ortiz fight. “It’s a pick ‘em fight, but I give the edge to Malik, because of his boxing ability. Malik, even though he doesn’t have a lot of knockouts, hurt me just like Ortiz did. But I didn’t have the legs to stay up with Ortiz on two weeks’ notice. I fought Ortiz on two weeks’ notice and went six tough rounds with him.”

Ortiz, 37, looked really bad at times against Thompson. The main difference in the fight was Ortiz’s punching power. When he was able to land heavy shots, then he looked good. But in between all those big shots from Ortiz, Thompson was making him look bad, and exposing him as an aging fighter who isn’t as good as many boxing fans thinks he is.

At heavyweight, any fighter can win if they land their shots. Scott hits hard enough to hurt anyone in the division if he can land his shots. If Scott connects with a hard enough shot, he could pull off an upset tonight against Ortiz. It wouldn’t be that much of a shocker, because Ortiz still hasn’t proven himself against the better heavyweights in the division. Ortiz’s best wins have come against 45-year-old Thompson and Bryant Jennings. Those are not the best heavyweights in the division. Jennings was landing a lot of shots against Ortiz, and making him look all of 37 or even older.

Malik Scott looked like the better conditioned athlete during Friday’s weigh-in. He was taller, and trimmer than Ortiz, who looked a little thick around the middle.

Scott’s best chance of beating Ortiz is to take him deep into the fight where he can potentially expose his conditioning and his advanced age. Ortiz has not been extended past the 7th round since his fight against Francisco Alvarez six years ago in 2010, when he was 31-years-old. That may seem like a good thing for Ortiz, but it’s not really a good thing because he’s not had to develop his conditioning in any real way like Malik has.

When you get an older fighter like Ortiz, who has been put in a lot of mismatches against soft opposition, it prevents them from developing their stamina. If Malik can take Ortiz deep into tonight’s fight, he might be able to drown him in the later rounds.

The Ortiz-Scott fight is scheduled for 12 rounds, and that could be a problem for Ortiz if Scott is able to extend him that far into the fight, because he’s going to be potentially laboring when it gets that deep into the fight.

If Ortiz loses to Scott, then he can forget about a title shot against Joshua in 2017, because Hearn won’t be able to sell the fight to the British boxing public. It would be sad news for Ortiz if he loses to Malik Scott, but it wouldn’t be surprising because he’s older, not experience in longer fights, and he’s not faced the type of opposition that he should have.