By Jake Tiernan: Jamaine ‘The Technician’ Ortiz is predicting that Devin Haney will be “too strong” for Vasyl Lomachenko when they battle it out in early 2023 for Devin’s undisputed lightweight championship.
In an interview this week, Ortiz said that Lomachenko is “too small” for the 135-lb division, and his fight with the younger, bigger Haney (29-0, 15 KOs) will play out similarly as their fight did. In other words, Haney will “dominate” Lomachenko with his jab and control the fight from the outside.
The 26-year-old Ortiz (16-1-1, 8 KOs) came up short against the former three-division world champion Lomachenko (17-2, 11 KOs) in a competitive fight on October 29th at Madison Square Garden in New York. The scores were 116-112, 117-111, and 115-113.
Ortiz felt that he’d done enough to deserve the victory, and he regrets not fighting harder in the championship rounds when Lomachenko came on to seal the victory.
Interestingly, Ortiz insists that he didn’t gas out in the last four rounds, as many boxing fans believe he did. He said he felt “too calm” and relaxed because he felt he was winning.
Ortiz was clearly getting the better of Lomachenko in the first six or seven rounds, but he took his foot off the accelerator in the last five rounds. Lomachenko stepped up the pace, and when he did that, Ortiz didn’t have that extra gear that he could shift into to preserve his victory.
Lomachenko is going to have to fight at a faster pace from the beginning against the larger Haney because if he falls behind early, as he did against Ortiz and Teofimo Lopez, he won’t be able to count on him gassing out as those two fighters did.
“I do. When I heard the scorecards, I’m like, ‘I got it,'” said Jamaine Ortiz to Fighthype about what went through his head as the scorecards were revealed at the end of his recent fight against Vasyl Lomachenko on October 29th.
“I would love a rematch. If he would give me a rematch, I think that would be a more interesting fight for the fans [than if Lomachenko were to fight Devin Haney]. That would be more interesting for the fans.
“If they really feel they won, then let’s run it back and let’s see if he can win in a dominating fashion or if I can win in a dominating fashion. I know if I were to face him again, I would take him out. I wouldn’t let it go to a decision.
“I’m probably going to favor Devin, but we’ll see,” said Ortiz when asked who he favors in a fight between Lomachenko and Devin Haney. “I hear a lot of people saying they feel that Loma will give him a fight.
“I just feel from his performance and watching how he has a good jab and how I dominated Loma with just basically my jab and controlling him. I feel like he’ll probably do the same thing and keep him at bay.
“I feel like Loma is too small for the lightweight division and Devin would be too strong for him. It would be a repeat of me and his fight.
“To me, the fight went how the sparring went,” said Ortiz when asked if Lomachenko has slipped since he sparred with him in the past. “You seen what he did to Commey right after.
“I wasn’t fatigued at all, and I think that’s where I f***ked up,” said Jamaine when asked if he felt he had the fight in the bag against Lomachenko in the championship rounds, and he didn’t put his foot on the accelerator.
“I should have never thought like that, to think like that. But I really felt good and confident that I had a lot of rounds in the bag. I thought they were clear, at least when I was in the ring. But yeah, fatigue was not one of the issues at all.
“I wasn’t surprised by it because I knew that was going to happen,” said Ortiz when asked if he was surprised at how easy the fight was for him against Lomachenko. “That’s why I was so confident and so calm. No, I wasn’t surprised.
“I was too calm and too confident. I felt I had these rounds in the bag, and I feel I was too calm, too relaxed, and too gym feeling. You know when you’re in the gym, it’s another day and another sparring session. I felt like it was like that.
“Sometimes you’re controlling the sparring sessions, and you can pick it up whenever you want. You kind of just relax. I had too much of that feeling. I think that’s what messed me up. I didn’t have that little bit of anxiousness and urgency or any bit of pressure. I was just too calm, too relaxed, too confident, and too chilled.
“Still taking risk management, and not trying to go all out and get hit with anything because anything can happen in boxing. I learned from my mistakes in the [Joseph] Adorno fight.
“If I’m up, why continue to rush, rush, rush, and from there, kind of take my time, pick my spots and take my time to flurry out and go all out from the beginning of the bell until the end of the bell.
“That was kind of my thought process throughout the fight was, ‘if I’m winning, do this, do enough.’ I was too calm and literally having conversations with myself during the fight.
“I’m not the type of person that gets butterflies. I’m just so calm and so chilled because I believe in myself. I don’t think a lot of fighters believe they’re going to win, even though they say it. I just truly believe in myself 110%.
“It was a very calm sparring,” said Jamaine when asked if he was getting the better of Lomachenko during their sparring session. “I know he was working on stuff.
“I was just trying to be the best sparring partner and imitate Commey as much as I could. That’s all it was and that’s all I’m going to leave it at. Sparring is sparring. I can’t really take sparring too seriously sometimes.
“I don’t feel like there was a time where he was hurt. When I rewatched the fight and heard people saying I hurt him to the body. I was able to see that.
“When I rewatched the fight, I caught him with a check hook coming in, and I kind of felt he was out on his feet from watching the footage. But during the fight, no.
“After re-watching it, there were a couple of times if I would have picked it up and stepped it up and brought it to him, I could have got him out of there.
“I should have won the championship rounds. I felt like I did enough to just win and not to dominate. If I had done a little bit more in every round because I never felt he dominated.
“Even the rounds that he did win, I don’t feel like he dominated those rounds. I felt like he won them by being a little bit more active, and not by dominating me. So I feel like if I had picked up a little more action and a little more combinations because I don’t feel like he did so much more than me, I would have won.
“The last scorecard 117-111, I’m like, ‘That’s pretty wide for either of us. For me or for him.’ I thought that was real wide, and I thought I had it until I heard ‘The new,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh s**t.’
“I don’t personally feel disrespected because I understand the business of boxing, and I’ve watched robberies before. So I don’t take anything. I don’t take anything personal, and I don’t take that directed at me. I just take it as that’s what happens in this game sometimes.
“We see robberies before, and we’ve seen crazy scorecards before. It’s nothing new,” said Ortiz.