Ortiz passed the test with a seventh-round knockout in a surprisingly strong fight filled with punches landed from both combatants and the question now is this- Is Ortiz ready for a championship opportunity?
Ortiz seems to be ready, but the impediment before him is the quality of WBC and IBF champion Errol Spence and WBO titlist Terence Crawford and although WBA champion (recently promoted from "regular" champion) Yordenis Ugas would be an underdog to Ortiz, Ugas is being steered towards fellow PBC member Spence to unify three of the four titles.
Hooker was the reason that this fight was so entertaining and it also took away his best chance of winning.
Hooker landed plenty of punches as the face of Ortiz will attest, but the decision to spend the fight in front of Ortiz and exchanging punches with the larger and stronger man likely eliminated any chance that he had of winning.
It didn't take a boxing savant to see from round one that Hooker was very unlikely to swap punches with Ortiz and make it through twelve rounds.
Hooker acquitted himself well -in the fight as he rose from a sixth-round knockdown before dropping to the mat after taking a glancing punch from Ortiz in the seventh when he would surrender due to a hand injury that he reported hearing a "pop" in his hand that forced his withdrawal.
I had Ortiz leading 58-55 entering the seventh round, four rounds to two with a knockdown.
It was after the fight that Hooker didn't come off well as he flipped off the crowd with "Double Birds" and abruptly ended his post-fight interview with Chris Mannix as he quickly fled the ring.
For Ortiz, he's in a tough spot.
I'm not sure he's ready for Terence Crawford, but it's the WBO that rates Ortiz the highest currently (2nd), and promotionally other than Mikey Garcia the welterweights that are on his level are all affiliated with PBC, who likely won't have a lot of interest in helping Ortiz or his promoters-Golden Boy Promotions.
It is possible that the winner of Spence-Ugas could be forced to fight Ortiz, who does hold one of those silly WBA belts, but that is unlikely anytime soon, if at all.
As for Hooker, he's now been stopped in two of his last three fights (losing his title to Jose Ramirez in 2019), and he won't have problems finding fights as Hooker has become an entertaining fighter.
But Hooker's chin doesn't appear to be able to hold up over the course of a fight against the top of the division and if I managed a young talented prospect (as Ortiz was) such as Jaron "Boots" Ennis (who fights Sergey Lipinets next month), I would try to line Hooker up for your fighter.
In the afternoon from London, the WBO finally crowned a cruiserweight champion after not having a cruiser champion (or light heavyweight for that matter) since the Nixon administration as undefeated Lawrence Okolie impressively demolished former champion Krzysztof Glowacki in six rounds to claim that championship.
Okolie won the first five rounds, kept Glowacki on the outside, and completely took him out of that before landing a titanic right hand that dropped Glowacki back first to the mat.
Glowacki barely beat the count, but when he wobbled to a neutral corner, the referee stopped the fight rather than allow Glowacki to face further punishment.
Okolie called out the best fighter in the division in IBF champion and winner of the World Boxing Super Series Mairis Breidis, which would be the best fight that you can make in the division.
At 6'5 and an 82 and a half inch reach, Okolie has the physical dimensions to move to heavyweight, which I believe is an eventual end game, so a Breidis fight would make a lot of sense for both guys, but it's one that needs to be made quickly and within the next eighteen months before Okolie outgrows the division..
In the boxing challenge, Ramon Malpica and I each earned four points for these two fights.
I lead the challenge 34-31 on the year.
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