By Robert Brown: This past Saturday 17th September was the long awaited highly anticipated showdown between Floyd Mayweather and 147lb champion Victor Ortiz.
The match started in fairly standard fashion with Victor Ortiz to many people’s surprise successfully landing straight left hands to Mayweather’s body on a fairly regular basis, although Mayweather seemingly had control of the fight and the fights tempo, the fight appeared to be heading down to the standard and familiar 12 round unanimous decision in Floyd Mayweathers favor, however in the 4th round things began to turn sour.
Victor Ortiz had successfully worked Mayweather towards the ropes and began by trying to land body shots, then for some reason appeared to leave his feet and jump into Mayweather, hitting Mayweather in the face, whilst I think trying to land a hook to the head. The referee Joe Cortez stopped the action and proceeded to deduct a point from Victor Ortiz, the infraction in Joe Cortez’s mind was severe enough to take a point without any cautions or any warnings.
After the point had been deducted from Victor Ortiz’s score card the two came together to apologize in the ring, they had touched gloves, completed the apology and as Victor Ortiz was going back to get set he was looking at the referee Joe Cortez most likely for an indication as to when to start the action again. In circumstances such as this the referee would call both fighters to center ring and restart the action by saying “box on”, on this occasion Victor Ortiz appeared to be looking for that indication and as a result got hit with a combination which knocked him out. Whilst that was occurring Joe Cortez for some reason appeared to be looking in another direction, probably at the “time keeper” for an indication as to when to start the action again.
Mayweather was smart enough to notice both Victor Ortiz and Joe Cortez looking in another direction and proceeded to take advantage of the situation by exploiting both of their mistakes and gained a knockout as a result of them.
Now people in the boxing community have been saying that Mayweather was dirty and perhaps was cheating by doing what he did, the fact of the matter is this what Mayweather did in some people eyes may have been un-sportsman like conduct, would I have done it? Probably not! But however sly sneaky and opportunist this may have been what Mayweather did was well within the rules of boxing and however much you might not like it this was not cheating, the referee clearly states before every single professional fight “protect yourself at all times, defend yourself at all times”, Victor Ortiz clearly did not do this and as a result paid the ultimate price.
Mayweather should not have hit Ortiz whilst he was distracted and looking at the referee, ladies and gentlemen my advice is this never, I repeat never take your eyes off your opponent this is a boxing match not a friendly game of cards and Ortiz should have known better and for those who say Ortiz could not have imagined Mayweather doing something like this, all I have to say is just look back in history and remember the “Gatti” fight when Mayweather hit him with a hook towards the end of round 1 I believe when Gatti was trying to get the attention of referee Earl Morton, and the “Mosley” fight, when Mosley and Mayweather ran a heated discussion after a break in the action and Mayweather hit Mosley with a straight right.
The point I’m trying to make is Mayweather has form in this area and Ortiz’s camp should have been prepared for something like this happening and the fact that they weren’t shows a lack of due diligence and unprofessionalism on their part.
You don’t look at the ref you listen for the ref, that’s what you have ears for, the fact that Ortiz took his eyes off his opponent and got knocked out was his own fault and Joe Cortez also made some major mistakes by not bringing the fighters together in the ring himself and saying “box on”.
There are people out there that despise Floyd Mayweather and no matter what he does or whoever he fights are going to continue to dislike him, and something tells me if another fighter had done the same thing to Mayweather they would have been congratulated.
Mayweather did not cheat and that’s the bottom line.