?Malik was running around the ring and made it hard for me to fight. Everybody comes to see a show and see someone fight and brawl. It made it hard for me??
Saturday night at Salle des ?toiles in Monte Carlo, Monaco, former WBA World interim heavyweight champion Luis ?King Kong? Ortiz (26-0, 22 KOs), the hard-hitting southpaw from Miami, Florida, by way of Camaguey, Cuba, dropped trial horse Malik Scott (38-3-1, 13 KOs), from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, three times on the way to a unanimous decision after 12 one-sided rounds to win the vacant WBA Inter-Continental heavyweight title.
The final scores were 120-105 (Robert Hoyle), 120-106 (Stanley Christodoulou), and 119-106 (Nelson Vazquez).
Fighting out of the blue corner in white trunks trimmed in red and blue, Ortiz, with his Cuban pedigree and otherworldly power, has raised expectations sky-high. But he has been inactive for eight months, which perhaps explains the plodding, desultory performance against a man he was supposed to starch in the first round.
Scott, fighting out of the red corner in pink trunks with black trim, deserves some credit for Ortiz?s subpar performance. He put up more of a fight than anyone expected or appears willing to acknowledge, despite the knockdowns, despite being outworked and outpunched, despite having not fought in 11 months himself.
The HBO troika said that Scott was just ?trying to survive.? Scott may be a stepping stone, but he?s a stepping stone with common sense. He knew better than to go toe-to-toe with Ortiz. Should he have stood in front of Ortiz and let him punch him? Had he decided to trade with ?King Kong? it would have been good for HBO?s ratings and Ortiz?s record, but Scott would not have been the beneficiary. So, he picked his shots, few though they were, and succeeded in frustrating Ortiz who was swinging for the fences with middling success and forgettable results.
Ortiz may be a victim of his own success. He may believe the writers who trip over superlatives with the same lack of grace as they trip over syntax. But when Ortiz says, as he said earlier this week, ?I?m willing to fight anyone, any champion, any place, and any time. I?m ready for anyone. Joshua, Wilder, Klitschko?I know I can beat all of them,? he has to back it up by stopping Malik Scott if his boasts are to be taken seriously.
Luis Ortiz might have had a bad night, to which he has earned the right. But WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder got Scott out of there in one and half minutes, which made tonight?s fight feel endless as we waited for the knockout which never came.
After the fight Ortiz, echoing HBO, and sounding eerily like Manny Pacquiao after his loss to Floyd Mayweather, said, ?Malik was running around the ring and made it hard for me to fight. 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.?
According to CompuBox, Ortiz landed 146 of 470 total punches thrown (31.1%) to 45 of 154 (29.2%) for Scott. In the power punch department, Ortiz landed 111 of 222 (50%) to Scott?s 42 of 135 (31.1%).
I have praised Ortiz in the past and hope to praise him in days to come. But if Luis Ortiz is all that he?s cracked up to be, he has to learn, however unlikely at the age of 37, how to make a reluctant warrior fight. Excuses satisfy no one, even those of us who don?t necessarily want to see a brawl. But a little boxing intelligence would go a long way and Ortiz, unfortunately, failed to reveal that intelligence in Monaco.
