Vergil Ortiz Jr’s manager, Rick Mirigian, states he’s interested in Keith Thurman or Errol Spence at Cowboy’s Stadium.
Agreeing to fight the 35-year-old inactive Thurman could backfire on Vergil Ortiz Jr’s team because there’s a chance he wouldn’t make it through training camp without suffering an injury and needing to pull out of the fight like he did earlier this year when he was scheduled to face former WBO junior middleweight champion Tim Tszyu.
Spence, 34, and Thurman are fossils at their age, who rarely fight nowadays. It doesn’t sound likely that either of these fights would ever materialize for Vergil, but even if they did, what does it prove for the 26-year-old to beat them? It still wouldn’t show that he can hang with the best at 154.
Mirigian says that if someone can “afford” the Ortiz vs. Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis or Ortiz-Crawford, he would be open to it. The only one who would potentially be interested in putting up the money to stage a fight between Vergil and Ennis or Crawford would be His Excellency Turki Alalshikh.
Boots and his management would need to agree to him moving up to 154 because he’s still hoping to unify the 147-lb division. If he moves up to 154 to challenge Ortiz Jr. for his WBC interim junior middleweight title, it could be difficult for him to return to 147. Ennis might as well stay at 154 if he were to defeat Vergil Jr. to win his WBC interim strap.
Ortiz Jr. (22-0, 21 KOs) fighting Ennis would involve a huge amount of risk for Vergil, who did not look great in his recent fight against Serhii Bohachuk on August 10th in Las Vegas.
Bohachuk out-punched and out-fought Vergil but found himself on the receiving end of a questionable 12-round majority decision. Many fans felt that the judges in that fight gave Bohachuk the shaft, and they were disappointed that Vergil didn’t agree to give him a rematch.
There was a report yesterday that Vergil Jr. vs. Boots Ennis would be considered for February 22nd in a Riyadh Season event along with Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez vs. Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez. In hindsight, it sounded too good to be true, and now it’s turned out to be hogwash.
