Ortiz is set to offer Wilder a chance to prove he can fight
IN many ways, Deontay Wilder is a heavyweight freak, constructed like a big man across the chest, a skinny runt across the ankles and with power that still seems to shock his opponents.
There was once, not many Siberian winters ago, a fighter called the Beast from the East, standing at over seven feet, weighing just under 22 stone and holding a heavyweight title belt. His name was Nikolai Valuev and he was little more than a physical freak — Wilder has something else, but nobody is quite sure exactly what it is.
Tonight, Wilder defends his WBC heavyweight title for the seventh time when he fights the Cuban ogre Luis Ortiz, a troubled and dangerous reject of 38, at the Barclays Centre in Brooklyn, New York.
It is Wilder’s most difficult championship fight yet of an underwhelming reign in what appears to almost be some type of parallel heavyweight universes; Wilder has beaten six different men in seven heavyweight fights and I would argue that he has so far easily avoided the six best active heavyweights during his time as champion.
It is not uncommon to miss the best in modern boxing, several British world champions have done the same thing, but it is annoying at heavyweight where there is added focus on transparency, one of boxing’s rarest commodities. Wilder and his loquacious people also claim he has met the best, which is fast becoming the most annoying deceit in boxing.
Wilder is a towering, gangling twist of muscle and bone, his punches land from all angles, he falls over his shots, he neglects his jab, he has only been hit a couple of times in 39 fights and so far during his long unbeaten sequence he has heard the final bell just once.
“Well, somebody must be hitting these guys,” he told me a few years ago when I asked about his untidy finishes. Two days later he cuffed, pushed, clipped and hit Audley Harrison when he was down for yet another first-round win; I guess the 70-second stoppage proved two points.
Ortiz (right) is a totally different type of fighter, a veteran of over 350 amateur contests and the victim of being at weights in his homeland alongside some great fighters back in Havana.
Ortiz never won a major international title, he was never a happy member of the fading Cuban system and he finally made his professional debut a few days before turning 31.
He has dropped some weight, pledged to live right and so far during two months of preparation he has not broken a single promise; Ortiz is unbeaten in 28 fights, with 24 being bludgeoned early but he also has doping violations against him.
Nobody wants to love Ortiz, nobody wants to see him win and a good against evil mix is never a bad thing in the boxing ring.
The greatest Cuban heavyweights have always refused the lure and lies of the professional game with Teofilo Stevenson and Felix Savon both remaining loyal to their idol, Fidel Castro.
Both Savon and Stevenson, with their glittering haul of six Olympic gold medals, stood at Castro’s side when tiny Cuban wizards ducked under and over walls to flee to the West and the endless promises of riches.
Heavyweights Odlanier Solis, Mike Perez and Ortiz all followed the baddest, rudest and craziest Cuban boxer of all, Jorge Louis Gonzalez, across a taboo boundary to the professional game.
Gonzalez was a brilliant amateur, a real threat but he grew fat in head and body as he bathed his many desires as a guest of the MGM in Las Vegas in the early Nineties. He should have been world champion, it’s that simple, but the good-life curse, an affliction that blights all young Cuban boxers when freedom alters their life, was excessive with that man. Gonzalez lost a world title fight to Riddick Bowe in 1995; Gonzalez had beaten both Bowe and Lennox Lewis as amateurs. Gonzalez even beat Stevenson and his defection, one afternoon in Helsinki in 1991, rocked the Cuban way. Sadly, Ortiz is part of a tradition of talented Cuban heavies falling way short in important fights.
“I change history,” Ortiz has promised.
A Wilder stoppage win sends a serious message to Anthony Joshua and so does a sensible performance, a cautious few rounds to slow the ageing Ortiz down.
Ortiz can win with a blunt assault, all risk, no finesse and hope that somewhere in the whirlwind and tangle of arms he connects with Wilder’s exposed jaw.
However, Ortiz has the reach and the pedigree to box, the ancient schooling to think beyond belting punches and if that happens then something special could unfold; win or lose, we find out if Wilder can fight.
We know Ortiz can, we have just never been sure if he wants to. AN angry Amy Foster took a swipe at the Commonwealth Games selectors after a solid performance at the World Indoor Championships in Birmingham last night.
Foster, who exited in the heats of the women’s 60m after a time of 7.35 seconds, admitted she still feels deeply hurt after being snubbed for selection for next month’s Games by the Northern Ireland Games Council.
Foster ran the qualifying standard on three occasions last year, but was left off the team in favour of athletes ranked higher in their respective events.
“I’m devastated,” she said. “The Commonwealths on the Gold Coast was something I thought about since the day it was announced in 2011. I wanted to be there and that’s a massive thing for me. To get the qualifying time three times, once in Australia, once in Ireland, what more could I have done? This was the one I really wanted.”
Selectors may well have been left red-faced after Foster’s recent run of form, and yesterday the 29-year-old admitted that she had been running with extra motivation since.
“I feel like I’ve proven a point and made some people uncomfortable,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of support and that’s been amazing, but whatever happens I can never get it back. The hardest thing for me is I did everything I could. I should be on that plane in three weeks’ time, but I’m not.”
In yesterday’s heat, Foster blasted from the blocks in impressive style, and through the opening 20 metres she led double Olympic champion Elaine Thompson. But she was soon swallowed up by the pack, coming home fifth in 7.35 seconds in a race won by Marie-Josee Ta Lou of the Ivory Coast in 7.17.
In the 60m hurdles, British champion Megan Marrs finished sixth in her heat in a time of 8.28 seconds in a race won by Norway’s Isabelle Pedersen in 7.94.
The Lisburn AC woman commented: “I am a little disappointed I didn’t get closer to my PB of 8.16 seconds. However, I was Flying the flag: Katarina Johnson-Thompson
happy with my start and am glad I was competitive against a world-class field. This is all about the experience of pressure and I have achieved my goals by being here. I will now start preparing for the outdoor season.”
In the heats of the women’s 1,500m, Portaferry’s Ciara Mageean was tailed off in seventh place in a time of four minutes, 11.81 seconds. The race was won by Sifan Hassan in 4.05.46.
A somewhat dispirited Mageean said: “I am disappointed with that as I wanted to get an Indoors PB of four minutes and eight seconds. However, this is a stepping stone as I am waiting to peak for April’s Commonwealth Games. I know I am better than this and I have plenty more training to do.”
Great Britain’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson claimed her first global title after winning the pentathlon.
The 25-year-old finished 50 points ahead of Austria’s Ivona Dadic and Cuba’s Yorgelis Rodriguez to take victory with 4,750 points. It ended a series of heptathlon disappointments after she finished fifth at last year’s World Championships in London, sixth at the Rio Olympics and 28th at the World Championships in 2015.
Johnson-Thompson said trackside: “It’s been up and down, a long old day, five events in one day is something I haven’t done for a while. You have to believe it in order to do it, it’s been a long time coming so it’s so special.”