2016 Luis Ortiz vs 2016 Anthony Joshua

Kellerman said at the end of 2015 that he thought Ortiz would beat the Fury who beat Wlad. Ortiz was regarded as possibly the best HW in the division and an uncrowned champion. But Scott, who is a fast and awkward mover if nothing else, exposed Ortiz's lack of footspeed. Yet many heavyweights are successful despite having slow feet: AJ's are on the slower side for an elite fighter, Whyte is no more fleet of foot than Ortiz was and AJ-conqueror Ruiz is even slower. Joyce is famously slow and Makhmudov is a slug but their other attributes can grant them considerable success.

Chisora lost the rounds to Scott before the stoppage at the end of the 6th, dropped Scott fewer times and took far more punishment than Ortiz. But that's Chisora's style: he's a punching bag pressure fighter with moderate power who will take 2-3 to land 1 if necessary. Ortiz is a counterpuncher who needs his opponent to engage to really rack up the damage but he's light years ahead of Chisora in skill, so he can win on the scorecards too.

 

Boxing is a corrupt, money driven sport and if Hearn wanted AJ to fight the best possible opponents he could have fought Ortiz rather than Breazeale, Molina, Takam/Pulev and Parker. All of these were low risk puddings for the same reward as no one knew who Ortiz was either, while Wlad was high risk but high reward. AJ could sell out stadiums against a dog in the road back then, so why fight an unknown pitbull when you can fight an unknown poodle? The same logic was there with Usyk, who wasn't even a dangerous puncher: fight 39.5 year old, 13 months inactive pudding Pulev instead and later threaten to drop the belt if Usyk didn't let AJ have it all his own way. It didn't work though because even with the corruption, they couldn't bridge the gap in ability.

Hrgovic and Hunter were featured on Matchroom undercards too, where have their careers gone? Mid 2019 is irrelevant because Ortiz was signed to PBC by that point (who had actually given him a title shot) and they didn't want AJ potentially defeating Wilder's best win, who was also more beatable at that point by the fact that he was 15 months older at 40+ and had been KO'd by Wilder in a war. They probably promised Ortiz another shot at the champ who had already brutally KO'd him, which he promptly got: no reasonable person can regard that as a duck or believes that a braver man in Ortiz was scared to fight a quitter like AJ, especially for a bigger payday as you claim he would have got. PBC were happy to let Ruiz be the fall guy though as they thought he was going nowhere and had already lost to AJ-victim Parker. Never in a million years did they expect Ruiz to expose AJ like that. Retrospectively, putting a 27 year old AJ in with Ortiz was clearly very high risk for no real benefit, so it didn't happen.

 

"These facts" are just your narrative to defend Hearn's corruption. I'm sure if pressed, you could give some reason why AJ "had" to fight Breazeale and a washed up Molina, two of Wilder's absolute worst defences. At the time of the Molina fight, David Price was also being considered, so it's not like they were locked into fighting Molina. They fought Molina because they thought he was the least dangerous option available and because he had the prestige of being a former world title challenger, like most of the other Klitschko era leftovers AJ fought.

[url]https://www.skysports.com/boxing/news/12183/10973286/joshua-wba-order-anthony-joshua-to-defend-title-against-luis-ortiz[/url]

[url]https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/3525092/anthony-joshua-wba-legal-mandatory-challenger-luis-ortiz/[/url]

The IBF are the same sanctioning body that made Glazkov-Martin for a vacant title after immediately stripping Fury post-Wlad but I'm sure you'll explain to me that this was totally legitimate. A-side cash cow AJ was able to pick and choose his defences, he wouldn't have been stripped if he'd fought Ortiz in late 2016 or 2017. He could have fought Usyk after Ruiz 2 (who had been his WBO mandatory since moving up from cruiser in 2019) but instead fought a 39.5 year old, 13 months inactive Pulev who had ducked him 2 years prior. Easy "mandatories" were just an excuse, there to pretend that their hands were tied. Everyone wanted to fight AJ because of the payday and status and although you'll claim that Parker has the better "resume" than Ortiz, no one who knows anything about boxing and certainly none of AJ's inner circle regarded a guy in Parker who KO's virtually no one, even COJANU, while leaning on A-side advantage at home to beat Ruiz by MD as being more dangerous than a highly skilled and experienced southpaw KO artist. Joshua also gave the game away by admitting that he didn't fear being outboxed (why would you as a massive A-side at home?) but feared "that one punch":

[url]https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/sep/23/anthony-joshua-admits-fears-one-punch[/url]

Povetkin fought AJ in late 2018, so Ortiz would have had to wait 2 years to fight AJ after signing with Matchroom by your own admission. Whereas signing with PBC in March 2017 actually got him a title shot 12 months later and had he signed in late 2016 instead of wasting his time pursing an AJ fight, he'd have likely got his first shot in 2017. In the immediate aftermath of the Price win where Povetkin didn't even look that good and got knocked down but scored a brutal KO, Hearn said that he wanted Povetkin to fight Whyte next instead of AJ. Send in the bodyguard! Ortiz lacked Povetkin's wealthy and powerful backers, so he could be messed around far more easily.

Ortiz schooled, battered and stopped Thompson and Allen in 6-7 rounds: Pulev and Takam went 12 rounds with Thompson at home and couldn't knock him down, losing 4 and 3 rounds respectively their own judges' scorecards, while Whyte went the full 10 rounds with Dave Allen and never seriously hurt him. I also don't think AJ would have been intimidated by Parker's pathetic decision wins at home against chinny journeyman Cojanu or light punching slug Ruiz. Parker may be better than Duhaupas in a 1 vs 1 but he's actually less dangerous than Duhaupas (who is no great threat himself) to higher level opponents because the latter would actually come to win. 41+, 17 months inactive, schooled and dethroned in his last fight Wlad in Britain was the only seriously dangerous opponent that AJ fought pre-Usyk, he doesn't get to dine out on that life and death 2017 win forever.

Hrgovic has complained that the big fights which promoters have promised him have not materialised. Why? Because he's high risk and low reward as Ortiz was. The pandemic affected some fighters (those from less marketable nations, who have no real following but are very dangerous) far more than privileged fighters like Whyte and AJ and the puddings they fought. Hunter fought a 40 year old Povetkin in late 2019, got a draw on a Matchroom card while most believed he did enough to win (Usyk and Bivol were almost similarly robbed on Matchroom cards). Then the following year, did Whyte fight the prime Hunter or a badly faded 41 year old Povetkin, who most believe lost the Hunter fight in a punishing 12 round affair a year prior? Whyte didn't have to fight Povetkin but he was seen as the lower risk, higher reward option relative to Hunter, so he got the fight.

"You also seem to be under the impression that Ortiz would have just jumped at that fight- yet when Joshua came knocking, why did Ortiz draw his curtains and pretend he wasn't home?"

I've already answered this BS: Ortiz was signed to PBC and they didn't want AJ to potentially beat Wilder's best win and they promised Ortiz another shot against Wilder at the end of the year if he didn't take the AJ fight, which he got. Your implication that an already defeated Ortiz who would go on to fight Wilder again was so scared of losing to AJ that he wasn't willing to fight him (unlike Eric Molina, who is obviously far braver than Ortiz and Wilder) even for a much bigger payday than he'd get from Wilder, plus more belts and another massive payday if he beat AJ and got the rematch, is a lunatic Matchroom narrative. Ortiz has also shown far more heart than AJ in the ring, so your implication that Ortiz is the coward and that's what stopped the fight is implausible on every level.

 

I don't care if I look stupid to stupid people.

"Ortiz was signed to PBC and they didn't want AJ to potentially beat Wilder's best win and they promised Ortiz another shot against Wilder at the end of the year if he didn't take the AJ fight, which he got. Your implication that an already defeated Ortiz who would go on to fight Wilder again was so scared of losing to AJ that he wasn't willing to fight him (unlike Eric Molina, who is obviously far braver than Ortiz and Wilder) even for a much bigger payday than he'd get from Wilder, plus more belts and another massive payday if he beat AJ and got the rematch, is a lunatic Matchroom narrative. Ortiz has also shown far more heart than AJ in the ring, so your implication that Ortiz is the coward and that's what stopped the fight is implausible on every level."