By Jeff Aranow: WBC heavyweight champion Deontay ‘Bronze Bomber’ Wilder (39-0, 38 KOs) says he’ll be doing the other heavyweight world champions a big favor by beating a fighter they’ve all been avoiding in unbeaten Cuban Luis ‘King Kong’ Ortiz (28-0, 24 KOs) this weekend on March 3 on SHOWTIME Boxing at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Wilder, 6’7”, says he’ll be taking out the trash by beating Ortiz, and helping the other heavyweight champions so they don’t have to worry about the 38-year-old Cuban.
Wilder is not going to get credit if he beats Ortiz. That’s the sad part. Wilder THINKS he’s going to get credit from the boxing world if he beats Ortiz, but he won’t. The fans are going to say Ortiz is old or he wasn’t using his drugs. The boxing fans are going to downgrade Wilder’s win. That’s why he should have gone in a different direction after Ortiz’s positive drug test last year. Wilder is now in a no-win situation with this fight.
Wilder says he doesn’t care what Ortiz is taking. He doesn’t care that Ortiz was popped for testing positive to banned drugs in the past. He wants to fight him and beat him badly.
The southpaw Ortiz is reportedly looking good in his training and is in great shape. If Ortiz can get back to the level he was at in 2014, he could beat Wilder. However, it’s also possible that even if Ortiz, 6’4”, could find the fountain of youth to rejuvenate himself, he’ll still end up getting knocked out by Wilder. Ortiz struggled during his amateur career when he was pushed to fight at a fast pace. He would tire and lose when he to fight hard. Wilder is going to push Ortiz to fight at his best on Saturday. Boxing is a young man’s sport, and Ortiz
“It’s going to be an explosive event,” Deontay Wilder said to ESPN’s First Take. “I can’t wait to get in the ring with this guy, because Ortiz is one of those fighters with a Cuban background with over 300 amateur fights and a lot of guys have avoided him. Even champions have avoided him. So I’m doing the champions a favor now by taking out the trash,” Deontay said.
Ortiz is one of those fighters that can look great at times, and then labor. In Ortiz’s best wins of his career against Bryant Jennings and Tony Thompson, he looked average until turning it to get a stoppage. Those weren’t fast knockouts for Ortiz. It took him 6 rounds to dispatch Thompson and 7 rounds to TKO Jennings. Ortiz isn’t a fast starter, and that might be bad news for him. He’s going to need to be a faster starter against Wilder. Ortiz might be shelled into oblivion by Wilder if he starts out slowly.
”I took the opportunity to say I want to pull this card and I want to fight him,” Wilder said. ”If people had said he’s the best, then I want to fight him, because I always said I’m the best. I always say I’m the best fighter. I always say I am the kind of the heavyweight division, the baddest man on the planet. Thu far, I haven’t got full credit, so if this is the step I have to take, if Ortiz is the man I must defeat and knockout to get my due respect and credit to the world, then I want him,” Wilder said.
Ortiz is or was one of the best heavyweights in the division. You could say that 2 years ago when Ortiz was still looking good and fighting often. Ortiz hasn’t looked good in 2 years, and he’s not been active. At this point, you can argue that Wilder is 2 years too late in picking Ortiz as his opponent for Saturday. Ortiz reminded me of an old Larry Holmes in his last fight against Daniel Martz last December. When I say old Holmes, I mean when he was 45-years-old, losing to Oliver McCall and 48, getting beaten by Brian Nielsen. Ortiz looked that old and that bad in his last fight against Martz.
If you want to give Ortiz a break, you can say that he had a year’s worth of ring rust on him going into the Martz fight, but I don’t think that’s a realistic explanation for why he looked so bad in that fight. It looked to me like age was rearing its ugly head with Ortiz. He’s just gotten old and he’s not going to be able to find his way back to the fighter that obliterated Lateef Kayode over 1,200 yesterday’s ago. Ortiz is not going to ever be that fighter again. We don’t know why Ortiz looked that good. Was that him naturally or was he artificially aided somehow.
”I don’t care what he’s done in the past,” Wilder continued. ”I don’t care what he’s doing now. When I get in the ring on March 3rd, it’s going down.”
Deontay Wilder doesn’t care what Ortiz has done in the past with his positive drug tests. He just wants to beat Ortiz and add his scalp to his resume of pelts. Depending on how good Ortiz looks, a victory for Wilder would help make his fight with Anthony Joshua a lot bigger. It’ll also increase pressure on Joshua and his promoter Eddie Hearn to make the fight with Wilder. Right now, Joshua and Hearn are both dragging their feet, taking on Joseph Parker on March 31st and then planning on setting up a fight with Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller for the summer.
Ortiz’s stamina could play a key factor in this fight. He looked really slow in his 2nd round knockout win over Martz. If Ortiz is forced to go 6 or more rounds against Wilder, he’s likely going to slow down even more. If Ortiz is looking slow and sluggish after 6 rounds, Wilder will begin bouncing big right hands off his chin. If Ortiz is stunned by one of those shots, Wilder is going to unload on him in the same way he did Bermane Stiverne last November and get him out of there in a hail of power shots. Slow guys don’t’ do well against Wilder. He does well against fighters that plod around the ring.