While many in the industry, including promoters Bob Arum and Gary Shaw, have been extremely critical of Victor Ortiz's performance in his loss to Marcos Maidana this past Saturday, Oscar De La Hoya was quick to jump to the defense of the overly hyped Golden Boy Promotions prospect. "I wouldn't label him a quitter, not at all," the Golden Boy stated in a recent interview. In fact, De La Hoya is confident that Ortiz will rebound, revealing that a rematch with Maidana is a future possibility.
"He's only 22 years old. He'll be able to bounce back and he told me he wants the rematch," Oscar stated. Of course, when that would take place remains to be seen as De La Hoya also admitted that an immediate rematch wasn't likely as they hope to build the confidence of Ortiz with a couple of fights first.
Bob Arum, who promoted Ortiz prior to Golden Boy Promotions, was far more critical as he flat out accused Ortiz of quitting. "Bruce Trampler always said that Ortiz had a lot of tools, but he thought, based on what he had seen, that Ortiz lacked courage; that when the going got tough, Ortiz would quit and that's what he did there. Can you imagine a fighter saying, 'well, I got knocked down and I wasn't going to go out on my shield,'" Arum stated in a recent Boxingscene.com interview with Mark Vester.
Promoter Gary Shaw echoed those sentiments. "The kid quit, he quit like a dog...It's in his genes [taking a dig at Oscar De La Hoya]. Ortiz just pulled a No Mas quit job," Shaw would tell Michael Marley in another interview.
Ouch! Brutal! It seems like the entire boxing world is coming down hard on Ortiz and it's going to take a lot more than De La Hoya coming on record to do damage control in order to repair the young fighter's reputation. Perhaps they might want to reconsider the idea of an immediate rematch. After all, if that's the fight that Ortiz wants, then why not give it to him? If it was just a matter of Ortiz getting caught up in the big lights and simply fighting the wrong fight, as De La Hoya implies in the interview, then surely Golden Boy Promotions should be confident that he won't make the same mistake twice.
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