VENTURA – They wouldn't be upsets if you could see them coming.
Coffee cups dropped on floors all over the world when Leon Spinks knocked off Muhammad Ali.
The unofficial "Yeah, right" record was set when people heard the bulletins from Tokyo: Buster Douglas really had stopped Mike Tyson
.If Mayweather agreed to fight Ortiz, the reasoning goes, he must know he will win.
That's why Mayweather hasn't fought Manny Pacquiao, because he really doesn't want to put the "0" in his 41-0 record within Pacquiao's artillery range.
All of that makes sense.
But you never see history coming.
On Thursday, Ortiz lay on the floor at his training gym, a converted garage in the back of an industrial park, and propped his legs against a wall. He missed a workout last week because of back problems.
But three weeks before that, he entered a triathlon at Camp Pendleton. A triathlon is something for which you train, not a training tool for boxing.
"They had 2,500 people and I finished ninth," Ortiz said. "This time, the guys who were with me put me in the elite bracket. I said, dude, this is my weekend off. They said, come on, Vic, just do it. But it felt good. I didn't even try that hard."
Ortiz likes to surf. He spent a year and a half at Ventura College, in between two jobs and training. He says he wants to get through boxing cogently enough to "dive out of a plane if I want to. At the end of the day boxing isn't what defines me. I'm Victor, not Vicious. That's my other persona. I don't even know that guy."
The party line from Camp Ortiz is that Mayweather has dodged more than just uppercuts.
"He's never fought anybody in his prime," said Danny Garcia, Ortiz's trainer. "Everybody's been either too old or too young."
Ortiz is only 24, a decade younger than Mayweather, but he is 29-2-2 with 22 knockouts. With a jarring right jab and a big left hook, he has floored everyone he has fought.
He was flying toward pay-per-view stardom when he got cut by Marcos Maidana on June 27, 2009, and the referee stopped the fight after six rounds.
"I don't deserve to get beat up like this. I have a lot of thinking to do," he said in the post-fight interview, a cryptic remark that, understandably, followed him around.
"We can thank our good friend Max Kellerman (the interviewer) for that," Ortiz said, smiling. "He ruined me for two years, but I should say thank you, because it made me stronger."
Ortiz went to the back of the line. He left Bob Arum's organization and signed with Oscar De La Hoya's Golden Boy.
"I told them I wanted Andre Berto," he said. Both Ortiz and Berto went down twice, but Ortiz won a bravura unanimous decision and the WBC welterweight title.
"Now I want Mayweather," Ortiz told Golden Boy matchmaker Eric Gomez.
"And everybody laughed. But Mayweather has never impressed me, ever since I was a kid," Ortiz said. "There's been a lot of hype. He's fought the right fight at the right time. Go home and turn off the sound. He's nothing. Well, not nothing, but not as great as people think.
"I thought he lost to (Jose Luis) Castillo. I thought Oscar was beating him, one-sided, until he stopped using the jab. I don't know that it's really a tough fight."
While Mayweather erupts at family members, Ortiz grew up by himself. His parents' influence was erased by their own substance abuse, and from 13-16 he lived with foster parents Sharon and John Ford in Garden City, Kan.
"I was a little knucklehead, not exactly a demon but I had some demons on my back and shoulders," Ortiz said. "I thought I knew it all. I've apologized to them quite a few times."
He and his younger brother, who lives under Ortiz's custody now, moved to Denver to be with a sister.
Former heavyweight Ron Lyle noticed Ortiz in a gym and began training him; trainer Robert Garcia, now estranged from his brother Danny, noticed Ortiz in a junior Olympics and moved him here.
Compelling life stories don't beat Mayweather, who loves to set the tone with his pre-fight jabber. De La Hoya admitted Mayweather infuriated him.
Ortiz said he has neutralized that already.
"I'm not dumb or anything, but talking to me like that is like talking to a mute, or a tree stump," he said. "I don't listen to a lot. Everything's been done to me."
Amusement danced in his eyes. Ortiz probably will not become the first man to beat Floyd Mayweather Jr. If he does, you've been warned.
Source: ocregister.com
