Kid Vicious Takes a Fall
posted by Large
When you’re pushing forty and you’ve chosen the sober path for yourself, when you have a wife at home and a rambunctious nine-month-old who makes it such that you rarely (dah… never) are to be found awake past eleven o’clock at night, and when you’re avidly working on the first paunch of your life and your hairline’s way down on the scorecards in its battle with Father Time and you smell of a good two hours of accumulated adrenaline sweat, and when because of all of these things and more you feel decidedly out of place amongst the emaciated and vapid vampires of Tinseltown after dark… when you are like this, people, it is VERY hard to know where to turn when you find yourself all amped and aimless after a fucking ferocious fight in L.A. lights a candle up your ass the size of a forest fire.
Me, I’ve chosen this cafe (and when there is a DJ in the corner playing an endless thrumming ode to digital technology, can an establishment actually be called a “cafe?”) in the lobby of my unfortunate hotel, The Standard, to try and wrestle with my feelings. For now I resort to prose – maybe later I will shift to rhyme. Maybe I’ll take the mic in this joint and drop knowledge. “I got so much trouble on my mind, refuse to lose…” I doubt I would even scratch the surface of my surroundings. Around me are gathered some of the most expensive-jeans-be-wearing motherfuckers I’ve ever seen in my life. The people who party away their lives in these ultra-fashionable hotels… they are a race unto themselves.
Another race altogether, nearer to my heart needless to say, are the men who choose to make their monthly nut with their fists and their faces, and oh did we see a prime example of their work tonight. My mind still reels, my heart still beats a little too eagerly for me to sit still. This incessant godawful house music has nothing on the beat of my heart right now.
I sensed it in the atmosphere, I have to say, I sensed a donnybrook in the making. I watched that Maidana/Kotelnik fight and I saw a man who was not about to go gently into anybody’s good night, second coming of the Golden Boy be damned. And despite the abundant talents of Golden Victor, nothing I’d ever seen of him had indicated to me that he had another mode, another gear, other than forward, relentlessly.
And so it is, so it was, and man did it cost him big. I didn’t hear Ortiz’s post-fight comments to Kellerman – the crowd was too loud and the echo off the mikes was cavernous. But I heard what he had to say in the presser, and it was one long, smiling shrug of surprise and remorse. “I didn’t listen to my corner,” he said over and over again, one eye purple and completely closed and the other not too far behind. “I fought stupid tonight.”
True dat. I sat next to Luis Sandoval during the fight, one of the great writers over at Boxing Scene who bring us all so much primo information and analysis. In the third and the fourth, as Ortiz seemed to be taking control of the fight and yet was so insistently reckless in the hunt against a man who was so clearly dangerous, Luis and I said to each other about thirty times something to the effect of, “he uh, he better be careful with this guy.” The way both men were winging their shots around in there, and given the fact that they’d both been hurt, both been down, there was little doubt that this thing was ending in a stoppage. Although Ortiz looked to have matters in hand, he was so careless in his approach that it was anything but certain that he was the one who was going to do the stopping.
And yet… well, he did sort of end up doing the stopping, didn’t he? He didn’t fess up to that in the presser. The gesture that he made with his glove as he stood up from the sixth-round knockdown, a gesture that looked for all the world like a “no mas” to me, was explained away as Ortiz trying to indicate that the knockdown should have been ruled a slip. Both Oscar and Richard Schaefer were adamant that Victor had wanted to keep fighting (Victor himself was less than adamant on this count) but that the referee had chosen of his own accord to refer to the doctor at that moment and then the doctor had stopped the fight. And the doctor is the doctor, right? Can’t argue with that doctor. Whaddyagonnado?
We know what we saw. Ortiz was in bad shape, he was cut, he was hurt, and that punch that Maidana caught him with at the very start of the sixth really looked to be the No Mas shot. After that, it was written all over his face – he’d had enough. It was a shame that it ended the way it did (and let me tell you something – it was a real pain in the ass for me – very hard to figure out what the hell happened down there in the media moshpit) because it soured what was otherwise an extraordinary fight, something that, had Victor just played along with the script and gone down with the ship the way he’s supposed to, would have been a leading entry in the at-this-point relatively thin Fight of the Year sweepstakes (right now I still got Marquez/Diaz over Berto/Collazo… but that’s another story).
As it is, it was still a VERY enjoyable fight. Maidana announced himself with authority and became an instant playa in the 140 sweepstakes. I’m eager to see that guy fight anybody right now (although whether said anybodys are going to want to fight him is a different story altogether).
And Ortiz… what will become of him now? It was clear to me in the press conference that both Oscar and Richard Schaefer were gravely concerned about the future of Golden Jr. Oscar knows too well the vagaries of that core Mexican fight crowd and what they make of a man who quits, or even appears to quit, when the going gets tough. They’ve invested a lot in this kid, and for five rounds tonight, he looked like he was worth every penny. Even when he started getting roughed up in the fifth, I found myself thinking, Christ, I guess you can add a set of whiskers to the considerable arsenal of Victor Ortiz. He ate some shots in there. One thing I’ll say about Maidana – he looks like he’s got pop, f’reals. And Ortiz was taking as good as he gave.
But then he just fell apart. I couldn’t help but think of the Miguel Cotto/ Ricardo Torres fight in A.C., another ridiculous throwdown that I was lucky enough to witness live. 2005, on the Wlad Klitschko/Sam Peter undercard. Were it not for Corrales/Castillo, it would have been a cinch for FOY.
Anyway, I thought of that fight tonight because it was the natural precursor to Ortiz/Maidana, with the young, rising star known for his brutality meeting up with somebody who doesn’t blink when he gets stared at real hard and so the next thing you know the staring contest turns ugly, fast. Ortiz was in tough tonight, maybe too tough at this stage of his career, much like Cotto was against a hammerhead like Torres. In the end, though, Cotto reached deep and got the job done that night, continued his rise after an exhilarating brush with disaster.
Cotto was 24 in the Torres fight. Ortiz is 22 right now. What kind of toll will tonight’s loss have on his future? It’s hard to say. He’s got a lot to learn, that’s for sure. But the fight itself was entertaining enough that I think the bloody brawl aspect of it is ultimately going to overshadow the bizarre conclusion. I certainly would be front and center for an Ortiz/Maidana rematch, and I think there’s a very good chance that Ortiz could win the second time around.
But as I am so often wont when considering the frou-frou spiritual side of the fight game, I find myself turning to Hemingway on bullfighting. I don’t have my dogeared copy of Death in the Afternoon on hand, but there are so many passages in that tome of fighting wisdom on the fragile state of the matador who allows himself to give reign to his cowardice in the ring, if only for a moment. Once they go to that place, Papa writes, they are all but certain to return, because the fear a man staves off to fight bulls (or Argentinians) must be staved off completely, or not at all.
In other words, sometimes when a boxer says “no mas,” it means para siempre. On that note, I’ll leave you, head up to my room with my bloodshot eyes and vibrating limbs to drain my television of every last drop of information about the life and death of Michael Jackson until I too say no mas to this strange and serious night. Serious as a heart attack.
June 28th, 2009 at 7:18 am
I dunno Large. Sure there were some big shots, but I’m not sure you can say he has a beard/chin whatever. Partially because he got effed up physically, but he also said to Max afterwards that he wanted to be able to “speak clearly when he was older.” I think I’m going to pull a Brad here, and think fondly of the fighters in those days of yore, who would leave their souls in the ring. Ortiz put up a good fight but then let me down last night. He’s going to need to have a Cottoesque next fight for me to take an interest in him.
I’d also live to see Maidana decapitate Kahn down the road.
June 28th, 2009 at 7:33 am
I’ll have to watch it again, but I thought it was pretty clear that Ortiz just plain quit. The cut, while ugly, didn’t seem to be messing with his vision (it was Maidana’s right hand that kept landing, not the left). Though Ortiz made some gesture toward his eye after the knockdown, it seemed more like he was just saying “This is a good enough excuse to end things, right?” rather than “I can’t see the punches.” I thought the doctor and ref were pretty much just playing along to that script: a quick glance at the cut, no vision test, no questions for Ortiz, just call it off. They knew the score. In the Kellerman interview, Ortiz didn’t talk about the eye or the decision to stop the fight; he talked about how much Maidana’s punches hurt him. He made it pretty clear that he was NOT going to be one of those guys who sacrifices life, looks, and brain-function for an interim strap. But if that’s the case, and he wants to keep boxing, he’s going to have to seriously reinvent his fighting style. (So maybe he’ll be the next Hector Camacho, rather than the next de la Hoya.)
June 28th, 2009 at 9:55 am
for my money it was great fight, marred by a less than satisfying conclusion. ortiz quit….and then basically told max that he wasn’t interested in getting punched in the face for a living. keep in mind, victor ortiz is the same guy that DLH tried selling teddy atlas on being the best fighter out there on FNF (to teddy’s credit, he basically shit on that proclamation).
to borrow a quote from Style Wars (the GOAT of docs), what ortiz did was some “never forgive action”, at least in terms of winning over hardcore boxing fans. i always try to cut guys some slack immediately after a tough fights (especially during in-ring interviews), but when you couple ortiz’s attitude with a suspect defense? i’m not sure where his career is headed.
i remarked to my wife between rounds 5 and 6 that it was clear that ortiz was done. in that corner he was completely resigned to the fact that he was going to lose the fight (and keep in mind that he’d knocked maidana down 3 times).
June 28th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Kopper – believe me, I’m not extolling Victor’s beard after what happened last night. Five rounds in I was impressed, but no indeed, a man does not get credit for his chin when he goes out like that. I am not so sure, however, that Maidana will walk through Khan, although I guess it remains to be seen what Khan has to offer at 40. But last night’s brawl gave me the feeling that anyone who could keep his composure and box a little bit might have an easy time with either of those guys. Both of them are right there to be hit all night and though they are mobile, they aren’t exactly creative with that mobility. Pacquiao, Jesus – Pacquiao would make quick work of them, maybe even both at the same time.
I’m in the airport right now – I gotta get home and see exactly what Victor said to Max at the end of the fight. Because based on what you dudes are saying, I’m guessing that somewhere between the ring and the presser, Oscar and Schaefer got a hold of him and said, “look mate, you don’t never admit to quitting, you hear me? repeat after me… ‘I wanted to keep fighting, I wanted to keep fighting…” Even then, Ortiz wasn’t all that convincing in his press conference performance. “Yeah, oh yeah… I wanted to keep fighting, I was ready to go, but the doctor you know… hey that’s how it goes.”
It’s a hell of a game. Kid like that, all the skills, the punching power… there’s absolutely no predictor as to what he’s going to do in a situation like that. It’s a rare specimen indeed who’s prepared to fight to the death, and he ain’t one of them. Dudes like that have been champs before – Roy leaps to mind, and one wonders about Floyd, although maybe we’ll never find out. Basically, to get by like that, you gotta have skills out the yingyang. Guys who don’t like to get hit need to be among those speed-demon geniuses who NEVER get hit, and Victor is a long long way from that privileged class to put it mildly.
June 28th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Adam, you are right on the money about Ortiz being done between rounds 5 and 6. His corner threatened to stop the fight 5 times and he didn’t put up any argument. It seemed like they were saying that to try to spark him, but there was no spark to be had. I didn’t watch the post-fight interview, but it was quite obvious from his behavior that he doesn’t like being hit. That doesn’t mesh well with the fact that he has absolutely no clue how to defend against a right hand. They showed a slow-mo of one of the 50 or so right-handed bombs that Maidana landed, and Ortiz moved his hand out of the way of the punch. It was crazy. He just has no idea how to defend against it. My estimation is that his career is over. Maybe not literally, but he has no chance to ever be good. Simply too many technical and (more importantly) mental handicaps.
June 28th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Ortiz’s corner kept saying they were going to stop the fight, WTF? This was before the cut.
I didn’t even stay to watch the after interview…The Rooster has places he needs to be.
Yet, I think what we seen is a mentally fragile person in Ortiz. Is he tough? Yes. Does he have heart? Anyone who goes in the ring has heart in my opinion. Yet, and let’s give credit…he ran into a guy who just has that much more heart than him. Ortiz was in deep water by the 5th when he almost started to fall after throwing looping punches. His defense needs a lot of improvement, he needs to jab more, and stop trying to kill with every single punch.
I hate to say this, but I do see some similarities to Panchito in this guy. He likes to surf…let him surf is my opinion. I wish him the best in dealing with his demons because I think after the fight he’s going to have to deal with them a lot more.
June 28th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
The first 2 paragraphs were just fucken gold. Long live the Douche Bags who wear the $180.00 dollar jeans. We are saying…$180.00 dollars?
June 28th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
victor ortiz would have loved for his corner to stop that fight between the 5th and 6th. his trainer told him multiple times he was gonna stop the fight and ortiz didn’t say a word. kinda like de la hoya in the pacquiao fight, actually. “oscar we’re gonna stop the fight.” *blank stare* “oscar do you want us to stop the fight?” *lip curls* “we’re stopping the fight, okay?” *urging stare*
he got punched square in the face to start the 6th, and like large said, he was ready for the fight to be over at that point. from there he was either looking to go down or having a towel thrown in for him. and i too coulda swore he gave a “no mas” after the knockdown.
June 28th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
i went back earlier and watched the fight again…what’s craziest about the way ortiz went out is that he had already knocked maidana down 3 times and was still throwing bombs in the 5th round. then he lost the 5th round on the cards and suffered a cut….and basically decided “no mas”?
ortiz didn’t even seem like he wanted to throw punches in the 6th round. and he didn’t appear to be seriously hurt by the body shot that sent him down. it was a baffling, golota-esque decision.
what is panchito bojado up to these days?
June 28th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
i didnt see the fight.
but i see the 180 dollar jeans.
when you do you.
thats when living starts.
June 29th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Large – great piece, you are the straw that stirs the No Mas drink. Having been to LA for a few big fights I know exactly what you are talking about with the after-fight scene. It is a different world and a different race – especially after you’ve become a Daddy. I bet I’ve got you beat on the paunch and the hairline though
From what I can tell – the cut right eye really bothered Ortiz. But there was a hard right hand to his left cheekbone – the one that left that huge bump – right before the bell ending round five where I saw him visably wince and you could tell that all of his fighting mojo had just been sucked out of him. The left hook that cut him and the right hand that marked his left cheek were major sonic blasts. It’s a wonder he stayed on his feet when taking either.
Maidana is brave and bold and a strong mamajamma. But I can’t help thinking he’s the second coming of Ricardo Torres. I just don’t see him being a dominant fighter at 140. He’ll be a seriously tough out for anyone but I don’t see him being top dog.
The loss by Ortiz really underscores the dearth of young American talent on the scene. Andre Ward looks like the real deal, Dirrell might or might not be – Williams, Dawson and Pavlik have established themselves – but beyond that I’m not seeing anyone on the way up who gets me excited.
By the way, the Ortiz loss probably cements the fact that Salita gets the winner of Kotelnik-Khan. Golden Boy was the one really pushing to leap-frog us. HBO said they’d be willing to do Khan-Salita (how often in boxing history has there been a significant fight between a Muslim and a Jew) – so you know who I’m rooting for on July 18th.
June 29th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Kurt – I definitely agree with you that the cut fucked with him. Kind of reminded me of Juan Diaz a little. Although when I watched the fight a second time, I saw that Ortiz was fighting with desperation from the first round on, fighting on crazed, and I think truly fearful instinct. Hatton said that he never recovered from the first right hand that Pacquiao hit him with. I sort of had the feeling that Ortiz never fully recovered from that first knockdown. And I agree with you – it’s a credit to him how hard he fought despite being clearly dazed and hurt.
I have to revise what I wrote in this piece having now seen the comments that Ortiz made to Kellerman in the ring. I don’t think his reputation will survive this fight, especially after Kellerman laid it out so brutally in his post-fight comments. When a fighter quits, and then says in the ring, “I’m not going out on my back to anybody, I’d rather just quit while I’m ahead so I can speak clearly when I get older,” and then follows it up with, “I’m young, but I don’t think I deserve to be taking this kind of beating… I have a lot of thinking to do” – when he says shit like that, he’s throwing in his towel. Man, I’m telling you guys, go watch a video of the presser. The revisionist history that went on between the ring and the press conference is absolutely Soviet in its reimagining of the past.
More than the quitting itself, I suspect Ortiz will live to regret those words spoken in disappointment and injury after a tough fight to a live television audience. They were childish, amateurish, I’m-taking-my-ball-and-going-home words, and they likely will haunt his career.
As for our paunches and hairlines, Kurt, we can compare notes the next time we hang. You had the edge on me last time, I believe, but yo son… I’m making a move.
BTW – Maidana = Torres, no doubt. Separated at birth.
June 29th, 2009 at 10:25 am
And go Dima! Salita vs. Khan on HBO? I raise my coffee mug to that.
June 29th, 2009 at 10:50 am
I don’t know if the reputation of Ortiz will survive his actions and dubious post-fights words or not. But as a fighter he’ll never survive if he doesn’t get better (and I mean way better) defensively. It was pathetic the shots he was getting hit with. At times Maidana was winding up and throwing punches like he was in a toughman contestant. A professional fighter should never get hit by those shots.
June 29th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Life lesson: Never eff with a dude with that many scars on his head. Those scars mean he’s been through some shit in his life and will have no problem going through some more to beat you up.
June 29th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
The scene in the corner prior to the 6th round was pretty surreal. Ortiz was battered and his trainer kept talking about stopping the fight. At one point Ortiz was asked if he wanted them to stop the fight and he just stared ahead, unblinking. At that point why send him back out? He clearly didn’t look interested in continuing.
June 29th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
If you want surreal, check out Ortiz at the post-fight press conference. He’s laughing, goofing around, putting his thumbs up, pointing at his eye, etc. You’d have thought that he won the fight. He even claimed he lost because his balls overrode his brain….how ironic. Point is after watching him and seeing his behavior I came away with the impression that Ortiz was simply happy to be there and even more happy he wasn’t hurt. That’s alright…..unless you want to be a champion at boxing.
June 30th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Great read, as always Large.
Good call Kurt, actually there were two right hands at the end of round 5 that made Vic really wince, first a straight one 10 seconds before the end of the round and that looping right hook when he was on the ropes right at the end. They shouldn’t have let him out into round 6.
The really hard blow, that blew up his eye in my opinion was the first punch of round 6 when Vic was kind of moving his hands to touch gloves and Maidana shoot the right over his hand.
I still don’t think one should be to hard to Ortiz – dude is 22 and he didn’t roll over after one punch, he fought back after hard punches and got hit with quite some blasts.
His reaction in the interview was strange – he really had something childish about him. Funniest part: Max turning away from Maidana and saying, with that tremble, sad voice: “Viiicctor”. And Victor (it’s not very good to hear, cuz Max had the mic still under his nose) answers: “Max.. how are you?”. Kellermann seemed really stunned for a moment, expecting every reaction but not a small-talk-answer.
@Kurt: I like your chances for a khan-salita fight – Khan should be fast enough for Kotelnik and they won’t let him get near another southamerican bomber too soon.
June 30th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Anybody read Ron Borges take on the fight?….here’s just a sample of what he wrote:
“Ortiz had already declared he was not willing to fulfill the contract all fighters accept when they decide to pursue boxing as an occupation…He made a wise choice if he was in any other profession but boxing. It is what seperates real fighters from those guys in the MMA who flail away with their elbows when they get a guy down but are allowed to quit without recrimination by using a more sanitized phrase whey they can’t take it anymore. In MMA they say he tapped out. Tap out in boxing and you quit.”
June 30th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
If Ortiz hadn’t been so hyped, such the heir-apparent of DLH, then I think people might consider his age and inexperience and dismiss the quitting and post-fight interviews. But I cannot conceive of a situation where there could be more egg on Golden Boy’s face than there is right now. A 20 second KO int he 1st round wouldn’t do as much damage to the kid’s career than what happened.
January 19th, 2011 at 1:54 am
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