WBC interim junior middleweight champion Vergil Ortiz Jr. says he immediately agreed to fight Israil Madrimov after Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis chose not to fight him on the February 22 card in Riyadh.
Virgil Jr. shouldn’t be involved in another controversial decision going his way as it looked bad for him to win a controversial decision in his last fight against Serhii Bohachuk. If he gets too much of it, it will limit his star power.
Low output concerns
Madrimov has the skills and power to make it a tough fight for Ortiz Jr. to make, but he doesn’t throw many punches, which Vergil Jr. should give a significant advantage. He is much busier.
In Madrimov’s loss to Terence Crawford, he didn’t throw enough in the championship rounds and was outworked. It was a winning fight, but he let Crawford get the better of him despite having less strength, size and youth. Terence just wanted it more. Vergil Jr. and his team likely saw Madrimov’s low output, which may be one reason they agreed to fight him. He can be worked out.
Ortiz Jr. (22-0, 21 KOs) says it “motivates” him in training camp as he prepares to fight a good opponent. However, he has only fought one good opponent during his nine-year career, beating WBC interim 154-lb champion Bohachuk by a very questionable 12-round majority decision on August 10 last year in Las Vegas.
Vergil was knocked down twice by Bohachuk and hit the deck in the first and eighth. He protested the first down, saying it was a slip, but replays showed it was a down.
Many boxing fans were rooting for Vergil to lose, and they felt he had given the Ukrainian fighter a decision. Ortiz Jr. drew a lot of criticism from people when he chose not to give Bohachuk a second chance to clear up the controversy. Turki Al-Sheikh could have insisted that he fight, and Vergil Jr. would probably. That never happened, so now Vergil moves on, followed by a dark cloud.
Besides Bohachuk, Vergil’s only other notable win on his resume came against Egidijus
Kavaliauskas He was rattled early in the fight but somehow survived to score a knockout in the eighth round.
Can Madrimov win?
“It’s a big fight on paper. He just had a great fight against Crawford. He did really well. Even though he lost, it’s not the kind of performance you can be ashamed of. He did great,” Vergil Ortiz Jr. said talkSport Boxing about Israil Madrimov’s recent loss to Terence Crawford on August 3rd.
“We were going to fight ‘Boots’, and the fight fell through. So, I thought, ‘Am I still on the map?’ It was quite up in the air, and then I got a call from my father: ‘Will you fight Madrimov?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I would. It’s a big fight.’ The reason I said yes is because he is a tough fighter.
“I am a very competitive person. It motivates me in the training camps when I know I have a hard fight ahead. It keeps me focused. I know there’s a lot at stake (against Madrimov), but I like it. It gets the adrenaline pumping,” said Vergil Jr.
This will be Vergil’s second good opponent in his career, and it will be interesting to see how well he performs. ‘Little GGG’ Madrimov can punch with both hands, and he has excellent boxing skills. Again, he doesn’t have a high output, and his stamina is on the weak side. He gassed in the championship rounds against Crawford.
Ennis Ducks?
“Can we talk about Boots for a moment because there was a bit of an argument between you both,” Gareth A. Davies told Vergil Jr. said about what happened with the fight between him and Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis that didn’t happen. “This is a fight we all want to see. There are 40 battles between the two of you. Do you feel he (Ennis) is avoiding you? There are arguments about weight and all that.”
“I don’t think he’s avoiding me. I think there’s somebody on the team that’s lying,” Ortiz Jr. said. said of his belief that someone in Ennis’s team was not being honest. “We as boxers are not the ones who negotiate. We don’t communicate. We have managers for a reason.
“I’m not saying it’s his manager because there are so many people who come up. I can’t say who it is because I don’t know who it is. All I know is on our side, we said, ‘Yes.’ I believe so. It’s a fight that needs to happen,” Ortiz Jr. said. said when asked if he believed he would eventually fight Jaron Ennis.
