Victor Ortiz returns to fighting this weekend when he makes his bare knuckle debut in California.
Ortiz is part of a July 18 BKB card in The NOVO in Los Angeles and is back competing after a fateful series of events that makes him believe that, at 39, he is destined to fight – with or without gloves – for another seven years.
As Ortiz tells BoxingScene the whole story, about going to church early one morning with his wife and fate, coincidence, family and religion conspiring to inform him he needed to fight again, he goes on to reflect on his 33-7-3 (25 KOs) career which started in 2004 and saw him last box in 2022, when he won a 10-round decision – after climbing off the deck – to defeat Todd Manuel.
Before that, he’d boxed just once since 2018, meaning he’s had two fights in eight years.
“I had received an offer, I won’t name promoters’ names or nothing, but this promoter from Las Vegas and I mean, God bless his soul or not, offering me a three-to-five year deal for my life in perpetuity,” Ortiz exclaimed.
“That’s a big no-no. Don’t do that. Paying you peanuts, right? And I go, I have two big boys, my sons, Royal and Malachi, in their room on my knees at 2.42 in the morning, I said, ‘Father God, Jesus, is it time for me to hang up the gloves? Do you not want me to box anymore? Please be transparent with me. If you don’t want me to fight anymore, it’s okay. I’ll still serve you. I’ll still give you the glory, I don’t care. But make it transparent, make it clear.’
“And mind you, the whole deal with the boxing thing ended because that door was closed. I can’t sign my life away in perpetuity. No. For peanuts? No. My sons have to live, they have to eat, and so do I and my wife. So I walked away from that.
“So then I have another company that contacts me, and they’re bare knuckle as well. And I didn’t know what it was. Long story short, they kind of never gave me anything other than, ‘Would you be interested in bare knuckle?’ And I said, ‘No.’
“Then… I got a phone call, and it was BKB.
“‘Victor, we have numbers, we have this, we have that, X, Y, and Z.’ I was like, ‘Well, I’m ready.’
“So that’s how BKB arose, and that’s how we are here. And you know what? They’ve delivered. They’re not talkers. I’ve met too many promoters that talk, and these are not them. So we’re here.”
Does he expect a significant difference between bare knuckle and boxing?
“Uh, maybe,” he said. “We’ll see when we get there.”
It is clear Ortiz can divide his career into two elements, what happened inside the ring – which he enjoyed, and what happened outside, which he did not.
Asked whether he has followed the developments with the Ali Revival Act, he said no, but he clearly believes fighters should be rewarded for fighting the best.
“It’s rough. It’s a cold sport, brother,” he said. “The boxers nowadays are, ‘I’m not fighting that guy. I’m not fighting that guy. I’m fighting that guy.’ You know what I mean? But if they’re going to actually fight top of the line fights, like the recent one that I saw, [Xander] Zayas versus [Jaron] Boots [Ennis], those are worthy fights, man. Now those are fights that those fighters need to be paid correctly, both of them.”
Does Ortiz, a former WBC champion at 147lbs, believe he has championship fights left in him?
“Absolutely,” he said. “Everything that I’m doing is because of that. Otherwise, I’d be sitting down somewhere else doing something else. I have to live up to what my standard is. I have to set the bar for my children. My sons are nine, six and one.”
He has no desire for them to follow his path into fight sports.
“No, sir,” he said, flatly.
“Two of my sons are not really growing up around me, but it’s strange because the limited time that I do have with them, when they see me hitting and training, I don’t force them to do nothing, they put on their own gloves.
‘Dad, can you help me?’
‘Yeah, I can help you.’
“I don’t teach them anything until they ask me. I don’t make them get into a ring. None of that. I don’t push it on them. [But] I paid it all in the ring for them so they can live free of being hurt. I’ll take the punishment.”
Ortiz speaks with clarity and matter-of-factly.
He doesn’t need to hesitate when asked whether he enjoyed his boxing journey.
“It’s a definite horror story,” he said. “[But] I’ve enjoyed the roller coaster for the most part. You have to take things with a grain of salt. The people who tell you, ‘I love you,’ they don’t mean it. The people who say they’re here for you, they’re not there for you. You just have to stay in your lane and keep going. Everybody loves you until you fall. I’ve understood that very well, from family to people around your personal inner circle, to just stay, it’s just part of it. A man once told me, ‘You have to learn how to move within the snakes,’ which is a sad thing, but it’s very true.”
Ortiz, however, does have affection towards his fights and most of his opponents. While he didn’t appreciate, he contends, being elbowed by Floyd Mayweather, in their controversial fight, asked about the boxing matches rather than the sport’s politics, he said happily: “
“They were all great, brother. They were all great, man. The matches that I’ve had, the privilege that I’ve had to share the ring with other fighters, that’s been amazing.”
Then, looking at the negative, he explained: “I’m talking more like the political side of things, the ugliness that comes with it. I think that’s what’s really ruined the sport.”
But, when he reverts to his opponents in the ring, he smiles once more. Asked about his two battles with Andre Berto, he said: “Berto, to me to me, he’s one of the greats, one of the greatest, man. Can’t take nothing from him, man. That guy’s dangerous.”
Did he enjoy fighting in the trenches? The first Berto fight was a war.
“I don’t,” he grinned. “I don’t enjoy getting hit like that – but yeah.”
There were plenty of big nights. Ortiz boxed Lamont Peterson to a draw, lost to Robert Guerrero, drew with Devin Alexander, was stopped by Luis Collazo and Marcos Maidana but beat Nate Campbell and Vivian Harris.
One boxer he never got to fight in the pros was his old amateur rival, Amir Khan.
Ortiz said it was never even close to happening in the pros.
“I wanted it, too, because we fought in the world as kids,” Ortiz recalled. “It was interesting how they scored that. The amateurs is different, especially when you fight in the worlds.
“They were using machines [computer scoring] or something like that, not scorecards. The machines is like, I don’t know how it worked, but it was very strange. They had a 30-point rule [being outclassed if a wide deficit opened up], which is strange. Anyone who taps 30 first, the fight is automatically over. That’s how he got me. I was like, ‘Oh.’ I got up for the third round. I was like, ‘I’m coming. I’m coming.’ The ref got in the middle and he went like this [waves his arms signalling it was over]. I go, ‘What?’ ‘What just happened?’”
Of course, those amateur days are a long way from the bare knuckle pit where Ortiz will find himself Saturday.
He believes his fighting style will have to change, and says he has five rounds to figure out what to do when he’s in there on Saturday. This new chapter begins for Victor Ortiz on the same trajectory he’s been on since December 14, 2020.
“People are going to say I’m crazy, but it’s okay, I’m a boxer anyways,” Ortiz said, talking about how he find the faith he clearly is so affected by.
“Jesus Christ of Nazareth appeared before me. I saw him. I literally saw Jesus Christ.
“And he explained everything to me. Yeah. People think I’m crazy. They’re like, ‘Oh dude, you get punched too much.’
“It’s okay. That’s fine. I know who I saw. I know who I met. I know who appeared before me.
“My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Asked what sparked the encounter, Ortiz added; “The betrayals from family, betrayals from close ones, losing everything, being betrayed by them and my own brother. That one was the ugliest one. So, you know, knowing that I’ve done nothing but good for so many people. And from there, I just, you know what? Jesus says that he’ll bring you to your knees in order for you to look up. And he did. And he explained to me why everything happened the way it happened. And it was… interesting, man. So here we are now, a newborn, reborn Christian. “And here we are, man, taking over the world.”
Ortiz starts this new takeover against former pro Domenic Salcido on Saturday.
