By Keith Idec
NEW YORK — Nate Campbell was among the veteran boxers who sought out Victor Ortiz in the aftermath of Ortiz’s infamous loss to Marcos Maidana.
Campbell constructively offered Ortiz advice as media members and fight fans were ostracizing Ortiz for essentially quitting against Argentina’s Maidana on June 27 at Staples Center. The disturbing defeat knocked Ortiz off the fast track to stardom, but Campbell encouraged him to avoid allowing the image-damaging loss to ruin his career.
“I talked to him before I fought [Timothy] Bradley,” Campbell recalled of their talk at Club Nokia in Los Angeles last summer. “I just told him to learn to be quiet. He shouldn’t have said nothing [after the fight]. He showed things about himself that nobody needed to know. Nobody told him to say that.”
Campbell alluded to Ortiz telling HBO’s Max Kellerman during his post-fight interview in the ring that, “I’m young, but I don’t think I deserve to be getting beat up like this. So I have a lot of thinking to do.”
Ortiz’s odd comments were almost as troubling to some observers as him indicating to referee Raul Caiz that he didn’t want to continue during the sixth round, just before a ringside physician called an end to the fight due to Ortiz’s cuts. Campbell was taken aback by Ortiz’s emotional comments, too, but he views Ortiz as “a nice kid” who needed some encouragement from a fellow fighter who has survived numerous personal and professional setbacks.
“He told me to keep my head up and just keep going for it,” Ortiz (26-2-1, 21 KOs) said. “So I can appreciate that. … He just gave me a lot of inspiration. He gave me some kind words, and I have nothing but respect for that.”
Nearly 10 months after Campbell attempted to assist Ortiz in getting on with his career, Campbell will try to ruin it tonight in The Theater at Madison Square Garden (HBO; 9:45 p.m. EDT).
Ortiz’s 10-round junior welterweight fight against Campbell (33-5-1, 25 KOs, 1 NC) will clearly be Ortiz’s toughest test since his mental meltdown against Maidana, who floored Ortiz in the first and sixth rounds and survived three knockdowns to win their memorable brawl by sixth-round technical knockout. The 23-year-old southpaw from Oxnard, Calif., has stopped Antonio Diaz (46-6-1, 29 KOs) and Hector Alatorre (16-9, 5 KOs) in his two fights since Maidana defeated him, but Campbell is just the type of crude, durable opponent Ortiz must beat to prove that he has truly overcome the Maidana disaster.
Rolando Arrelano, Ortiz’s co-manager, has said a loss to Campbell could do almost irrevocable damage to a fighter who this time last year was being billed as one of the future faces of boxing both by his handlers at Golden Boy Promotions and HBO Sports executives. Campbell intimated that Ortiz isn’t prepared mentally for the rough rounds he has ahead of him tonight, but Ortiz says he has learned from the Maidana mistakes and is ready to show skeptics that he can regain his position as an important player at 140 pounds.
“I figured it out,” Ortiz said. “Everything’s behind me. It has been. I fell off, got up and shook it off.”
Ortiz couldn’t shake what was bothering him prior to meeting Maidana. In hindsight, Ortiz feels as though he should’ve withdrawn from that interim WBA title fight to address the family problems that hurt his focus before the biggest night of his career.
“I was very ready [physically],” Ortiz said. “I just never prepared, I guess, mentally. I let my personal problems interfere. And that’s never been [the] case [with me]. I’ve always rolled it off and said, ‘Hey, I’m good.’ That night, I don’t know what happened. My dad came into my life for the first time since I was 10, my sister sent me a [disturbing] text. It was horrible. My brother walked out two months prior to the fight. It was just not the night that I wanted to be disputing for something that big.”
Campbell suspects Ortiz will react the same way he did against Maidana the next time he encounters extreme adversity in the ring.
“That’s his character,” Campbell said. “You can’t change his character. We can’t. God can, but we can’t change that character. And the same people he had around him are telling him the same things they were telling him [before the Maidana fight].”
His own critics have condemned Campbell for opting out of his WBO junior welterweight title fight against Bradley.
Campbell contended he couldn’t see out of his left eye, over which he sustained a cut caused by an accidental head butt, and the fight was halted after three rounds Aug. 1 in Rancho Mirage, Calif. The unbeaten Bradley (25-0, 11 KOs, 1 NC) initially was declared the winner, but the California State Athletic Commission changed the outcome to a no-contest three weeks later.
Bradley was winning the fight rather easily through three rounds, which was why Campbell’s critics were skeptical about his inability to see between the third and fourth rounds. That was Campbell’s first legitimate junior welterweight fight since December 2000, and he, like Ortiz, has yet to defeat a top 10 contender at 140 pounds.
The 38-year-old fighter from Jacksonville, Fla., did defeat Juan Diaz to become the undisputed lightweight champion in March 2008, however, which makes him the most accomplished, if not the most dangerous, opponent Ortiz has faced.
“He has to bring a lot more [against me] than what Victor Ortiz has brought to these other guys,” Campbell said. “When has he ever beaten a world-class fighter who was on top of his game? I have.”
Ortiz doesn’t dispute Campbell’s credentials, but he warns people preoccupied with what happened against Maidana that they’re going to see a different fighter tonight before Britain’s Amir Khan (22-1, 16 KOs) defends his WBA super lightweight title against Brooklyn’s Paulie Malignaggi (27-3, 5 KOs) in the 12-round main event.
“He’s a former world champ for a reason,” Ortiz said. “I can’t even take him for granted. I’m ready. I paid my dues at the gym. I left sweat, blood and tears there. I’m ready.
“He’s tough. He’s very tough. But let’s not forget, man, I’m no walk in the park.”
Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com.
