By Scott Gilfoid: Matchroom Sport is going to need to think hard what they’re going to do with heavyweight contender Luis ‘King Kong” Ortiz (26-0, 22 Kos) after the way he struggled tonight to take out the high level journeyman Malik Scott (38-3-1, 13 KOs) in their fight at Salle des Étoiles in Monte Carlo, Monaco.
Ortiz was forced to go the full 12 round distance to defeat Scott by a decision, and he was not impressive at all in the fight. This is the same Malik Scott that the talented Deontay Wilder took out in one round with a left-right combination in 2014. Ortiz didn’t have the power to finish off Scott, even though he did knock him down three times in the fight in winning by the scores 120-105, 120-106, and 119-106.
Ortiz looked like an old and shot fighter. Ortiz was more than exposed in this fight by Scott. HHe looked like an old man in the fight. I just wonder what Ortiz’s promoter Edie Hearn is going to do with the guy. He went and signed Ortiz and now he’s got a guy that might not be good enough to beat the likes of Kubrat Pulev, Bermane Stiverne or Alexander Povetkin.
“Everybody comes to see a show and see someone fight and brawl. It made it hard for me. I’m a little disappointed because I wanted to knock him out, but he was moving around and made it hard,” said Ortiz after the fight.
Ortiz plodded around the ring all fight long, throwing single shots, and expecting Scott to fall on his face from the results of the shot. When Scott started to fight back occasionally in the second half of the contest, Ortiz looked uncomfortable and confused.
The southpaw Ortiz was plodding after Scott, and not moving quickly with his feet. Ortiz was one-paced and unable to speed up his foot movement or show much variety with his punches. I only saw a small handful of uppercuts from Ortiz in the fight despite the fact that there were plenty of opportunities for him to throw that punch. Instead, we kept seeing Ortiz throw overhand left hands, and this made it easy for Scott to get out of the way of his power shots.
What was so surprising was how easily the 36-year-old Scott was able to avoid Ortiz. Scott used just a little bit of movement around the ring, and it was enough to elude the slow-footed Ortiz. Heck, even when Scott was stationary with his back against the ropes, he was able to make Ortiz miss with his shots by using a little bit of head movement. By the later rounds of the fight, Ortiz looked tied in knots mentally and unable to let his hands go in the way that he needed to do in order to get a knockout.
Part of the reason for that was because of some of the hard right hand counters that Scott had hit Ortiz with in the fight. It caused Ortiz to lose his nerve in my opinion, because he stopped trying to throw shots.
Scott went down in the 4th, 5th and 9th rounds from Ortiz’s power shots. However, Ortiz was never able to put Scott away after he got him hurt. A good heavyweight like Deontay would have wiped the deck with Malik if he got him down, but for some reason, Ortiz couldn’t do the job and that’s worrisome. It makes you wonder whether boxing fans have over judged how good Ortiz is.
This was Ortiz’s debut for Matchroom Sport, who he recently signed with. Ortiz’s fight ws televised in the UK, where Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn hopes to turn him into a star and match him against IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua. To be sure, Hearn can still make the fight between them, but it doesn’t look like Ortiz is going to be a star for his promotional company.
It’s unclear how many years Hearn signed Ortiz for. If it was a short period of time, then he needs to try and maximize the time he has by putting him in with Joshua straightaway. Before then, I wouldn’t Ortiz in with any talented heavyweights like Deontay if I was Hearn, because that would be a good way of getting him beat. Hearn needs to make sure he protects Ortiz like a mother hen so he doesn’t get beaten. Golden Boy Promotions, the previous promoters for Ortiz, did a good job of matching him.
With the victory, Ortiz wins the vacant WBA Inter-Continental heavyweight title. That’s obviously not a major world title. For Ortiz to win a major title, he’s going to need to beat the likes of Joshua, Deontay Wilder, Shannon Briggs vs. Lucas Browne or Joseph Parker vs. Andy Ruiz Jr. winner.
Knowing Hearn, he’ll likely wait until Joshua is done with both the Eric Molina and Wladimir Klitschko fights before he throws him in with a champion. In other words, Hearn will keep it in house by matching Joshua and Ortiz together rather than taking a risk by matching Ortiz with one of the other champions.
Scott slipped on the canvas every now and then in the fight, but that was just one of those things where his footing was bad. Ortiz knocked Scott down with a textbook rabbit shot in the 4th that shouldn’t have counted in my view. That was really bad looking. When Scott tried to let the referee know that he’d been hit with a rabbit shot, he was met with no reaction. It’s too bad because that knockdown shouldn’t have counted. I do think the knockdown in the 5th and 9th rounds should have counted, but definitely not the one in the 4th.
What was odd was how Ortiz wasn’t able to do much even when he had Scott standing with his back against the ropes in the fight. Ortiz wasn’t able to do much of anything even when Scott stood and fought him. Scott is probably kicking himself right now for not attacking Ortiz the way he should have, because he could have potentially taken him out in the last five rounds of the fight when Ortiz started to get tired. Ortiz looked old and slow in the last half of the fight, a fighter much older looking than his chronological age of 37.
Scott was really giving it to Ortiz in the 7th round when he nailed him with some beautiful shots to the head.