Vergil Ortiz Jnr will go straight to a Jaron 'Boots' Ennis fight, trainer Garcia assures

CARSON, California – To the post-fight question of whether Vergil Ortiz Jnr will move directly from his contract-dispute layoff since November into a fight against newly unified 154-pound champion Jaron “Boots” Ennis, the answer is yes.

Ortiz trainer Robert Garcia told BoxingScene Monday that unbeaten WBC interim champion Ortiz, 24-0 (22 KOs), his father and promoter Oscar De La Hoya have assured they would go right at Ennis without a tune-up should the opportunity present itself.

Ennis promoter Eddie Hearn cast doubt on the scenario following Ennis’ impressive three-knockdown, seventh-round TKO of 23-year-old former champion Xander Zayas Saturday night at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Hearn recounted how Ennis sat ringside at Ortiz’s second-round stoppage of veteran Erickson Lubin during the fall in Fort Worth, Texas.

“By the way, we went down there on our own to Texas, to sit there, with no tickets,” Hearn said. “No one wanted us there. We sat backstage. DAZN put us in the corral. No one wanted us on the stage. We found our way to get into the ring.

“Vergil Ortiz – I respect and like the guy – where is he? I would be fucking crawling here.”

Ennis criticized Ortiz for both allowing a business dispute with De La Hoya to spoil Hearn’s months of negotiations for the bout, and for skill he views as lesser than his own.

“He gets hit by me, it’ll be different,” Ennis said.

Hearn said he wouldn’t stoop to telling Ortiz he was taking a steep pay cut to fight Ennis now that the Philadelphia fighter is wearing the WBO and WBA belts, but he did support his fighter’s wish to make this what Ennis called a “legacy tour” and go first after WBC champion Sebastian Fundora and IBF champion Josh Kelly, whom Hearn also promotes.

“We don’t need to prove nothing. We don’t need to chase a fight,” Hearn said. “We’re not going to sit there, full of arrogance, and say, ‘Tough luck, Vergil Ortiz. He’s the unified champion. He’s the superstar of the sport. Get in line.’

“What we say is, ‘We love the big fights, but we took that Vergil Ortiz fight, signed for it. Took it for no belts, took it to the fans to prove that [Ennis] was the best.’ Unfortunately for Vergil Ortiz… sorry, Vergil, in a way, we want to be undisputed. We don’t rule out that fight. It’s a big fight. [Ennis] is about legacy and there’s the IBF and the WBC to [still] win.”

Hearn said during the post-fight news conference that Premier Boxing Champions executive Luis DeCubas reached out to him to explore a three-belt unification in the fall.

“I think Eddie started saying that [about Ortiz pausing before an immediate showdown] because maybe he wants another fight for ‘Boots’ before fighting Vergil,” Garcia said. “But if that fight was presented… [Ortiz promoter] Oscar De La Hoya said he would push for that fight to be next. We’re ready for it.

“Vergil fought in November. Vergil had some issues with his promoter, his contract, but now he’s in the gym. He’s always sparring and training and so, yes, we will go straight. It’s a huge fight, a fight I know we can win. So we will go straight to it, no problem at all.”

After collecting his second consecutive trainer-of-the-year award at Thursday’s Boxing Writers Association of America dinner in New York on Thursday, Garcia remained in town to attend Ennis-Zayas.

“The fight was so exciting, with so much back-and-forth action, I became a fan,” Garcia said. “I was jumping up and down. Xander showed a lot, more than anybody expected. And ‘Boots’ did, too, getting tagged a couple times, but responding and coming back stronger and winning by TKO. That showed a lot about ‘Boots.’”

Yet, Garcia’s eyes as a trainer never abandoned him.

“Watching it as a possible fight for [Ortiz], I’m seeing a lot of points Vergil can take advantage of, can really benefit from,” Garcia said. “That’s why,  like I said, let’s do this fight. I don’t question that Vergil beats ‘Boots.’”