Floyd Mayweather will unquestionably re-renter the pound for pound ratings that he disappeared from due to inactivity when they come out this week following his 4th round KO of Victor Ortiz in their welterweight title fight Saturday night in Las Vegas.
The KO came about in an untraditional way. Scoring the fight for 8countnews.com?s round-by-round scoring, I had Mayweather up three rounds to none heading into the fourth round.
In the 4th, Mayweather found success tagging Ortiz with clean right hands. Ortiz?s best moments would come when he would rush in on Mayweather and land a few shots, but nothing that seemed to damaging. It seemed like the crowd reaction to these moments might have led some to believe that these bum rushes were more effective for Ortiz than they actually were.
Things turned dirty towards the end of the 4th and the foul play was clearly ignited by Ortiz, not Mayweather, which some people are seemingly forgetting while viewing Ortiz a sympathetic victim in the fights aftermath. With Mayweather up against the ropes and Ortiz trying to land some punches, he all of a sudden in the midst of trying to land punches with his fists, launched his head into Mayweather?s face and landed the most intentional and flagrant head butt I?ve ever seen in a major fight. It was illegal. It was intentional. It was unsportsmanlike.
Referee Joe Cortez saw it like we all did. He called time out in order to deduct Ortiz a point for the infraction. Before he could even take Ortiz?s hand to hold up as he told the judges to deduct him a point, Ortiz went over and hugged Mayweather to apologize for head butting him and even kissed him on the cheek.
Then while Cortez was actually deducting the point from Ortiz, he touched gloves with Mayweather for apology number two.
Perhaps forgetting that he was in a boxing match and not a contest to see how often you can say sorry to your opponent, Ortiz went to seemingly apologize again. As he did this, Joe Cortez called for the time clock to start up again and for the fight to resume. Ortiz still seemed to want to apologize. He had his hands down and wasn?t protecting himself, which is directly against the instructions that every boxing referee gives fighters before they compete, ?protect yourself at all times.?
