Ortiz Jr. Vs Madrimov: Can “Little GGG” expose the stir?

Interim WBC junior middleweight champion Vergil Ortiz Jr. says he immediately accepted the fight against Israil Madrimov after Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis decided not to fight him on the February 22 card in Riyadh.

Vergil Jr. should not be involved in another controversial decision that goes his way because it felt wrong to win a controversial decision in his last fight against Serhii Bohachuk. If you get too many of those, it will limit your star power.

Concerns about low production

Madrimov has the skills and power to make this a tough fight for Ortiz Jr., but he doesn’t throw many punches, which should give Vergil Jr. a significant advantage. It’s much busier.

In Madrimov’s loss to Terence Crawford, he did not pitch enough in the championship rounds and was outworked. It was a winnable fight, but he let Crawford get the better of him despite having less power, size and youth. Terence simply loved him more. Vergil Jr. and his team probably saw Madrimov’s poor performance, which may be one of the reasons they agreed to fight him. You can outwork him.

Ortiz Jr. (22-0, 21 KOs) says it “motivates” him in training camp when he prepares to fight a good opponent. However, he has only fought one good opponent during his nine-year career, beating WBC interim 154-pound champion Bohachuk by a very questionable 12-round majority decision on August 10 of last year in Las Vegas.

Vergil was knocked down twice by Bohachuk, falling to the ground in the first and eighth. He protested the first fall, saying it was a slip, but replays showed it was a fall.

Many boxing fans saw Vergil losing and felt he had his mind made up over the Ukrainian fighter. Ortiz Jr. received a lot of criticism from people when he decided not to give Bohachuk a rematch to clear up the controversy. Turki Al-Sheikh could have insisted that he fight, and Vergil Jr. probably would have done so. That never happened, so now Vergil moves on followed by a dark cloud.

Aside from Bohachuk, Vergil’s only other notable victory on his resume came against Egidijus.
Kavaliauskas. He was left shaky early in the fight, but somehow survived to score an eighth-round knockout.

Can Madrimov win?

“It’s a great fight on paper. He just had a great fight against Crawford. He did it very well. Although he lost, that is not the kind of performance one can be ashamed of. “He did very well,” Vergil Ortiz Jr. told talkSport Boxing about Israil Madrimov’s recent loss to Terence Crawford on August 3.

“We were going to fight ‘Boots’ and the fight fell through. So I thought, ‘Am I still fighting on the card?’ I was kind of up in the air, and then I got a call from my dad: ‘Would you fight Madrimov?’ I say, ‘Yes, 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 training camps when I know I have a tough fight ahead of me. It keeps me focused. I know there is a lot at stake (against Madrimov), but I like it. It gets the adrenaline going,” Vergil Jr. said.

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 either hand and has excellent boxing skills. Again, it does not have high performance and its resistance is poor. He faced Crawford in the championship rounds.

Ennis ducks?

“Can we talk about Boots for a second because there was a bit of an argument between the two of us?” Gareth A. Davies told Vergil Jr. about what happened when the fight between him and Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis didn’t take place. “It’s a fight we all want to see. There are about 40 fights between the two of you. Do you feel like he (Ennis) is avoiding you? There are discussions about weight and all that.”

“I don’t think he’s avoiding me. I think there is someone on the team who is lying,” Ortiz Jr. said of his belief that someone on Ennis’ team is not telling the truth. “We as boxers, we are not the ones who negotiate. We are not communicating. We have managers for a reason.

“I’m not saying I’m his manager because there are a lot of people who come into play. I can’t say who it is because I don’t know who it is. Everything I know is on our side, we said, ‘Yes.’ I think so. It’s a fight that has to happen,” Ortiz Jr. said when asked if he thinks he will eventually fight Jaron Ennis.