By claiming victory this week in a Nevada court in its case with unbeaten junior-middleweight Vergil Ortiz Jnr, Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions is empowered to both scrap an anticipated showdown with Jaron “Boots” Ennis and bench Ortiz until September or beyond.
Ortiz, 24-0 (22 KOs), remained resolute about his future, despite the recent legal setback.
"Although the judge didn’t see it our way and the fight is blocked for now, my team and I will be moving on to arbitration and to the court appeal. My time with [Golden Boy] is done. I am confident that my right to move on to other opportunities will be upheld," wrote Ortiz Wednesday afternoon on social media.
In conversations with a handful of individuals connected to – and with knowledge of – the case, the scenario of Ortiz being put on ice until the fall is unlikely.
The expectation within the Ortiz camp that includes his manager Rick Mirigian and attorney Gregory Smith is that Texas’ WBC interim 154lbs champion Ortiz would win in arbitration, where Nevada judge Cristina Silva sent the case Tuesday.
“I’d be shocked if it doesn’t settle out with such a big fight on the horizon, where everyone makes money,” boxing industry attorney Kurt Emhoff told BoxingScene Wednesday. “Generally, these cases all settle out when there’s incentive for both sides to get it done.”
Emhoff is not involved in the case, but he knows boxing history is littered with cases – including De La Hoya’s own separation from Top Rank/Bob Arum and Canelo Alvarez’s parting with De La Hoya – where legal precedent doesn’t intend to stop a fighter from earning purse money.
That would compel Golden Boy to strike a deal to bring Ortiz back to the ring, the Ortiz side reasons.
In its January 16 lawsuit against Golden Boy, Ortiz’s team presented four prongs it believes rise to the level of breaching the contract.
In a three-year extension that took effect in August 2024, Ortiz’s team contends the contract stipulates that at least one alternative to a fight offer should be pursued.
Upon Ortiz stopping Erickson Lubin in his native Texas in November, De La Hoya immediately let it be known that Ortiz was the clear “A-side” of the bout with recently unified welterweight champion Ennis, 35-0 (31 KOs), even though Ortiz has never worn a non-interim world-title strap.
De La Hoya proceeded to declare Ortiz deserved a 60-40 percentage split in his favor, with the bout’s winner collecting an extra 5%, subjecting Ennis, 28, to a 35% split in defeat.
Not surprisingly, that take-it-or-leave-it demand chilled fight talks with Ennis promoter Eddie Hearn.
The Ortiz side was left confused by the 60-40 purse split, with one asking, “Vergil gets 60% of what?” When a figure of $3 million for Ortiz was mentioned, his team was mystified, noting American champions Shakur Stevenson and Teofimo Lopez collected a reported $8 million apiece for their January 31 bout at Madison Square Garden.
Ortiz’s camp believes its active contract permits manager Mirigian to shop around for better deals, and a report last week stated Matchroom was willing to pay Ortiz $12 million to fight Ennis April 18 in what Hearn, as recently as this week, said was “the best American fight to be made.”
The Ortiz side fought to argue the December 31 end of Golden Boy’s union with streaming partner DAZN additionally allowed the fighter to split with De La Hoya’s company, but Nevada judge Silva didn’t see it that way after reviewing the Golden Boy-Ortiz contractual language.
The fact that Golden Boy remains in an exclusive “relationship” with DAZN connected to fights including a January card in Palm Springs, California, and an upcoming March 14 show in Anaheim, California, helped Silva point the matter to arbitration.
But Ortiz including language discouraging De La Hoya from souring relationships that could enrich the fighter is a rich point of contention.
Following De La Hoya’s string of harshly critical “Clapback Thursday” comments regarding the new Zuffa Boxing promotion headed by UFC CEO/President Dana White and backed by a $10 million annual investment by Saudi Arabia boxing financier Turki Alalshikh, the Saudi group Sela became uninterested in Ortiz-Ennis.
Although Alalshikh’s “Ring” fights were connected to De La Hoya fighter Ryan Garcia’s welterweight title win in Las Vegas on February 21, the silence toward Ortiz-Ennis is deafening, and the Ortiz side is convinced De La Hoya sabotaged his fighter through his unfiltered social-media posts.
Is it now impossible for Golden Boy to make fights with Alalshikh’s involvement? Does Alalshikh want to assist in an Ortiz split that would lead him to Zuffa Boxing?
The questions persist, along with two others: When will Ortiz fight again? When will he meet Ennis?
“I would expect them to get it done,” Emhoff said of Ortiz-Ennis. “Not by April, but this year.”
