It’s official, folks — Victor Ortiz is not in Kansas anymore.
And while I concede his hard-luck back story is still second to none, it’s just as clear that he came to Las Vegas Saturday night to participate in an event for which he was woefully unprepared.
In practical terms, the poor kid brought a knife to a gunfight.
Oh, sure, he’d done all the right things going in. He flexed for the “24/7” cameras, boldly claimed Floyd Mayweather Jr. had outlived his shelf life and arrived at the MGM Grand ring with a strut typically reserved for those with more than one title-fight win in a seven-year pro career.
And once inside, bless his heart, he kept trying to play that leading man role. He landed a couple left-hand leads. He pushed and shoved his elder in the corners. And he resurrected a maniacal smile from the Andre Berto fight during the short bursts when combat was intensified.
But when the fourth round arrived, he got himself in over his, errr… head.
Perhaps determined to exact a pound of flesh before being swept away by decidedly negative momentum, Ortiz initiated another roughhouse scrum, and — before referee Joe Cortez could intervene fairly and firmly — sprung forward on his toes to drive his skull into Mayweather’s face.
The true intent of such a punk move? Who really knows.
Maybe he was looking to break a nose. Maybe he was hoping to open a cut. Or maybe, as he tried to sell to gullible microphones and cameras in the aftermath, maybe it was just an accident.
Regardless, the angry look on Mayweather’s face was visible.
And as he impatiently paced while waiting for Cortez to issue a penalty, his message was undeniable:
“You, my friend … just wrote a check that you’re a– can’t cash.”
The five-division elite showed his ire with a combo as vicious as there’s been this side of Manila, reducing his foe to ex-champ status and riling 80-year- old HBO analyst Larry Merchant to the edge of verbal senility.
It was both a predictable and pathetic display from the agenda-wielding Merchant, whom Mayweather has clearly rubbed the wrong way since beginning a weight-class climb with a 130-pound belt in 1998.
The old coot has recited the same drivel repeatedly in Mayweather’s HBO afterglows, most recently eschewing deserved praise to claim “everyone knew going in” that he’d whip Shane Mosley in 2010.
