Vergil Ortiz Jnr will stop Erickson Lubin after engaging him in a “trade up”, according to Adam Booth.
The rival junior middleweights fight on Saturday evening at the Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas, and Booth will be watching with the task of preparing his fighter Josh Kelly for his IBF title fight with Bakhram Murtazaliev in 2026.
England’s Kelly is expected to challenge Murtazaliev on January 31, concluding over a year of inactivity for the Russian since he stopped the respected Tim Tszyu inside three rounds. That the 30-year-old Lubin favoured instead fighting Ortiz Jnr is perhaps partly a reflection of Murtazaliev’s reputation, but Booth considers Ortiz Jnr to be similarly dangerous, and expects his aggression to be too much for Lubin to resist.
“Ortiz is a tenacious pressure fighter who constantly walks into range and lets rip with fast dangerous shots, whether you punch or not,” Booth told BoxingScene. “His weakness is he can get caught when opening up, but his successes far outweigh these moments.
“Lubin is a high-level operator and an experienced challenger. A slick and capable southpaw. [But] he can be hurt by the highest-level punchers.”
Booth, based in Surrey, England and the former trainer of, among others, Andy Lee, George Groves and David Haye, was then asked why he believes Lubin favoured fighting the 27-year-old Ortiz over Murtazaliev, who he is so keen for Kelly to challenge, and he responded: “The Ortiz fight would be more commercially attractive, I suspect.
“I think Ortiz will win by stoppage. His tenacity and power will do this for him during a ‘trade up’.”
