Vergil Ortiz Jr. was one of boxing’s most fascinating fighters this time two years ago.
A hungry, young knockout artist, none of his first 18 opponents went the distance with him. The then-23-year-old Ortiz’s fan-friendly style made him a rising star, someone seemingly on track to fight one of the welterweight division’s established standouts and eventually elite 147-pound talent Jaron Ennis.
A rare case of rhabdomyolysis, a damaging muscle condition, and then a combination of severe dehydration and heat exhaustion have caused Ortiz to postpone and/or cancel more fights since then, three, than Ortiz has completed as scheduled. The Grand Prairie, Texas native has boxed only once since he knocked out Lithuanian contender Egidijus Kavaliauskas in the eighth round of their August 2021 bout at Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas.
After an entirely wasted 2023 in which Ortiz’s shot at WBA world welterweight champ Eimantas Stanionis was postponed three times and ultimately canceled, a healthy Ortiz is motivated to regain the momentum he had early in 2022. Ortiz (19-0, 19 KOs) will end a 17-month layoff Saturday night when he makes his debut at the junior middleweight limit of 154 pounds against Ghana’s Fredrick Lawson (30-3, 22 KOs) in a 12-round main event DAZN will stream worldwide from Virgin Hotels Las Vegas (8 p.m. ET; 5 p.m. PT).
Eager to make up for lost time, Ortiz hopes Golden Boy Promotions can keep him as active as possible in 2024.
“I definitely wanna fight at least three times this year,” Ortiz told BoxingScene.com. “I wanna shoot for four. I wanna get my momentum back. You know, I had a lot of momentum, and a lot of that momentum was when I was fighting three, four times a year. I wanna be active. I want my name to be in peoples’ mouths again. I just wanna do my job. I’ve been training. It’s like you’re training for something, and then you don’t get to do your job, and you’re just training for nothing.”
Ortiz acknowledged that he won’t feel fully confident in his abilities again until he gets through this fight with Lawson. DraftKings sportsbook lists Ortiz as a 25-1 favorite, but Ortiz’s return is about shedding some rust, adjusting to a new weight class and demonstrating that he can still become the fighter for whom fans and reporters had such high hopes.
An ambitious Ortiz mentioned former fully unified 154-pound champion Jermell Charlo (35-2-1, 19 KOs) and WBO junior middleweight champ Tim Tszyu (24-0, 17 KOs) as his top targets in his new division. He also still sees former undisputed welterweight champ Terence Crawford (40-0, 31 KOs) and ex-IBF/WBA/WBC 147-pound champ Errol Spence Jr. (28-1, 22 KOs) as potential opponents because Ortiz expects them to move up to junior middleweight sooner rather than later.
At the moment, Ortiz is simply satisfied to have gotten through an entire training camp and fight week without incident. His last rescheduled bout versus Stanionis was scrapped July 6, just two days before they were supposed to square off at AT&T Center in San Antonio, because a severely dehydrated, “overheated” Ortiz was hospitalized.
“Training has gone very well,” Ortiz said. “I feel like this is honestly the best I’ve felt in a very long time, to the point where it feels familiar. You know, like, ‘I almost forget what this feels like.’ So, I’m ready. I’m ready mentally and physically.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.