IT COULDN?T have come at a better time for Victor ?Vicious? Ortiz. Pilloried for purportedly quitting against Marcos Maidana, he was up against arguably the biggest challenge of his career?the undefeated Andre Berto.
Berto was favored by most odds makers and this writer concurred. I thought the Haitian?s superior boxing skills and natural strength would overwhelm the smaller Ortiz who was moving up from the junior welterweight division.
Surprise, surprise. Not only was Ortiz able to match Berto punch for punch, he was clearly the stronger fighter who bullied his opponent from pillar to post.
HIGHLIGHTS. In the first round, Ortiz immediately takes the fight to Berto and advances behind some rapid jabs. A little past the one-minute mark, their legs get entangled just as Ortiz lands a left to the head. The ref correctly rules it a slip.
But just a few moments later, Ortiz lands a right hook during an exchange that has Berto backing up towards the corner post. A follow-up flurry has Berto taking a knee. He gets up at the count of six and action resumes.
In the second round, an off-balanced Ortiz gets caught with a right hand and goes down. He appears more surprised than hurt.
In the fourth and fifth, Ortiz continues his aggression but in the sixth round, he gets careless and runs into a Berto right and gets dumped. The defending champion tries to finish off the shaken Ortiz but in the process gets caught by an Ortiz counter right hook and goes down. This is round-of-the-year material.
Berto boxes better the rest of the fight, but Ortiz clearly has his number. The unanimous decision in his favor is clearly warranted.
PROGNOSIS. By fight time, Ortiz he had bulked up all the way to 161 pounds, while Berto was at 156 pounds. No wonder he looked bigger and stronger than the welterweight champion. That says a lot about how Ortiz must have struggled as a junior welter.
Now that he has moved up, Ortiz seems to be a monster at 147 pounds. Sure Berto was largely untested, but nobody has ever dominated him the way Ortiz did.
That being said, is he ready for the division?s elite? Two more fights and he may be. The thing about Ortiz is that he is a true warrior and genuinely loves to mix it up, which makes for crowd-pleasing action.
Because he is a brawler, it may be that he is already as good as he can be, with perhaps a minor tweak here and there.
A vicious left hander with a porous defense against Manny Pacquiao? Sure why not. Or would you rather have Joshua Clottey in there?
KHAN-McCLOSKEY. Amir Khan easily outworked Irishman McCloskey in six uneventful rounds. For that, put the blame on the latter?s inexplicable refusal to throw punches.
Instead, he proceeded to fight like a second-rate Roy Jones, keeping his lead hand low, and trying to bait Khan into missing. While he met with some middling success, Khan?s reach advantage soon came into play and eventually some of the more telling blows landed.
Mcklcosky seemed content in throwing occasional uppercuts and single shots which seemed lamentable as he seemed to possess the handspeed to bedevil Khan with some combinations. But because he seemed content in punching sporadically, all the rounds easily went to Khan.
In the sixth round, a clash of heads ended the night for McClosky as Khan was awarded the victory on account of his lead on the scorecards.
Khan intimated that he would not give the Irishman a rematch as he wanted to move to bigger things.
It would be churlish not to give Khan the credit he deserves, but for this writer, it?s hard to erase the image of him running around the ring and turning his back to the marauding Maidana. In stark contrast, aging veteran Erik Morales stood up to Maidana and took his beating like a man.
LAST ROUND. It?s on Sharlene Hernando, who recently celebrated her birthday with hubby Ian and little cherub Fiona Rashed. Cheers!
