Vergil Ortiz Jr (19-0, 19 KOs) says he wasn’t pleased with how he performed on Saturday night in stopping the game but limited Michael McKinson (22-1, 2 KOs) in the ninth round in the headliner on DAZN at the Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas.
It wasn’t the type of performance that Ortiz Jr needed to show the boxing world that he was ready to dethrone welterweight champions Errol Spence Jr or Terence Crawford.
Based on this performance, the ONLY way Ortiz Jr is going to win a belt at 147 is when Spence & Crawford move up to 154. Even then, Ortiz Jr won’t win a title if he goes up against the likes of Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis. That guy is clearly a cut above Ortiz Jr.
McKinson did an admirable job of befuddling the 24-year-old Ortiz with his slick defensive skills and surprisingly good mobility.
Ortiz Jr’s inability to land his best power shots had to be frustrating to him, because McKinson was standing directly in front of him the entire night.
It wasn’t until the eighth round that Vergil Jr finally caught McKinson with a left to the body to finally put him on the canvas in the closing seconds.
Fortunately for Ortiz Jr, the shot incapacitated the right side of McKinson, making it impossible for him to take a similar shot at the start of the ninth.
“I know that I can do 100 times better. I didn’t like my performance at all,” said Vergil Ortiz Jr about his win over McKinson.
Ortiz’s problems are likely unfixable, unfortunately. He lacks the hand-eye coordination needed to look good against highly skilled fighters like McKinson. It’s fair to say that if McKinson had Boots Ennis’ power, he’d have won tonight for sure.
“All the way through the fight there was never a time where I felt I was going to be stopped,” said Michael McKinson at the post-fight press conference.
“I thought I was going to take him to points, and be the first person to end that knockout streak. In round eight, he caught me with a body shot. It hit my hip bone, and this whole side, I couldn’t really use this side at the end of the eighth.
“I came out in the ninth round, and he hit me in exactly the same spot. It was on the hip a little bit.
“Vergil is something else. There’s not all that hype for no reason,” said McKinson.
