Vergil Ortiz Jr. navigates deep waters to tilt scoring late

LAS VEGAS – Thrust into the foreign land of rounds 10, 11 and 12, Vergil Ortiz Jr. swept the championship rounds on all three judges’ scorecards to pull out his majority decision triumph over Serhii Bohachuk.

Ortiz (22-0, 21 KOs) had previously knocked out all his opponents before the ninth round but was made to endure a distance firefight with Bohachuk, who scored knockdowns in the first and eighth round.

Through nine rounds, Bohachuk (24-2) clung to leads of 86-83 (judge Max De Luca), 85-84 (David Sutherland) and 85-84 (Steve Weisfeld).

But Ortiz kept throwing heavy punches, landing defining blows (in the judgment of the judges) and then staggering Bohachuk in the fateful 12th as the outcome hung in the balance.

Had Bohachuk won the 12th, the outcome would have been a majority draw, allowing the Ukrainian to retain the WBC interim junior middleweight belt that now belongs to Ortiz.

“If you have two knockdowns and you have Bohachuk landing the hard punches, we feel in our heart of hearts that these decisions need to stop,” Bohachuk promoter Tom Loeffler said in the postfight news conference. “Every text I’ve received and every post I’ve seen on social media says Bohachuk won the fight.”

While Ortiz trainer Robert Garcia praised his fighter for shrugging off the flash knockdowns and conquering the deep waters he had never swam into to win Saturday's fight, Bohachuk’s cornerman was emotional and incensed over the scoring.

“Man, it hurts,” Bohachuk trainer and former Ortiz cornerman Manny Robles said after congratulating Ortiz on the victory.

“I get sick and tired of this shit, time and time again. For these officials, I don’t know what they’re looking at. [Reporters] should interview the judges and say, ‘What the fuck were you looking at?’”

Ortiz is expected to take a lengthy break after the brutal bout, which will contend for Fight of the Year. Boxing power broker Turki Alalshikh said he wants Ortiz to next fight four-division champion Terence Crawford.

Team Bohachuk says it is open to any option in the deep division, including an Ortiz rematch. 

“This could go two or three times, like the Canelo-GGG trilogy,” said Loeffler, who promoted former middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin. “Unfortunately, we had bad judging in that trilogy, too.”