Brandon Rios vs. Victor Ortiz in February

By BoxingNews.com

By Dan Ambrose: Struggling former world champions Brandon Rios (33-3-1, 24 KOs) and Victor Ortiz (31-6-2, 24 KOs) will be facing each other on February 4 at a still to be determined venue in Los Angeles, California. A lot of boxing fans see the 30-year-old Rios and Ortiz as shot fighters.

This should be a good fight with a possible sudden ending. It might bring decent ratings. However, in the big scheme of thing, it doesn’t mean the winner will go anything spectacular. Knowing how boxing is run, I wouldn’t be surprised if the winner of the Rios-Ortiz fight gets an undeserved title shot against one of the welterweight world champions.

Ortiz and Rios are currently not ranked in the top 15 at 147, but that doesn’t mean the winner won’t get a title shot. The winner might get a title shot because they’ll be seen as a safe opponent, and they’re both recognizable guys to the casual boxing fans.

Ortiz and Rios will need to be kept apart during the press conferences and face offs, because there’s a possibility that they could start going at it on the stage. These guys do not like each other, and all they need is an excuse to start trading shots. If there’s going to be a face-off between them, then there needs to be someone standing there ready to jump in to stop them from brawling.

Rios hasn’t fought in over a year since being stopped in the 9th round by former World Boxing Organization welterweight champion Tim Bradley in November 2015. Bradley dropped Rios tice in the 9th with body shots. The fight was then stopped. Rios looked like he hadn’t trained well for the fight, as he rehydrated to 170 after making weight at 147. That’s 23 pounds of water weight. Rios weighed the same amount that middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin rehydrates for his fights at middleweight. Rios looked like he didn’t belong in the ring with Bradley in that fight because he was too heavy.

The loss for Rios was his third in his last five fights. One of Rios’ wins was his controversial 9th round disqualification victory over Diego Chaves in 2014. That was the fight that Rios was losing at the time that the referee disqualified Chaves for throwing an elbow. I’ve seen the replay of the fight in slow motion. There was no elbow thrown by Chaves. The stoppage saved Rios from losing the fight though, because he was clearly on his way to losing the match and there was only one round remaining.

This is a fight that would have made a lot more sense if it took place in their primes, which was four to five years ago. Ortiz, 29, has been doing downhill as a fighter since his 4th round knockout loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2011. The thing is, Ortiz was probably never that good to begin with. He quit in his fight against Marcos Maidana in the 6th round in June 2009. After that loss, Ortiz won four straight fights against guys that were either old or not that good to begin with in Antonio Diaz, Hector Alatorre, Nate Campbell and Vivian Harris. Ortiz fought to a 10 round draw against Lamont Peterson in 2010 before picking up the biggest win of his career against Andre Berto in April 2011. That was the fight in which both Ortiz and Berto were down twice. It was a good win for Ortiz, but he still shaky in winning the fight. Ortiz also looked bad in his fight against Lamont Peterson before that. Peterson was knocked down twice by Ortiz in the 3rd round, but then he rallied and had Ortiz looking flustered in the last five rounds.

“Yeah, it’s going to happen in February,” said Rios to Fighthub.com. “It’s going to be an exciting fight. I don’t really know how it’s going to play out. We [expletive] hate each other. Yes, that’s no line. The fights going to happen, that’s 100 percent sure. I’ve been waiting for this fight. The reason we couldn’t do it was because is the fact that different promotions. But now we don’t have different promotions no more so now we ready.”

It’s hard to say whether Rios is more shot than Ortiz. They both have looked really bad in their last five fights. Ortiz has looked a little worse than Rios, but not by much. Ortiz was stopped in the 4th round by Andre Berto last April.

Ortiz had knocked Berto down in the 2nd round. Berto came back to drop Ortiz twice in the 4th to get the knockout. In Ortiz’s fights before that, he beat Gilberto Sanchez Leon and Manuel Perez by knockouts. Those were against weaker opposition that was used as tune-up/confidence builder type of opponents. Ortiz was stopped in three fights in a row from 2011 to 2014 in his defeats against Floyd Mayweather Jr., Josesito Lopez and Luis Collazo.

The loser of the Rios vs. Ortiz fight is going to find himself in a tough situation trying to claw their way back into contention. I don’t think the winner would deserve a big fight, but like I said, I think they’ll get one just based on them being recognizable fighters.