Victor Ortiz, Joel Diaz Are No Longer Working Together

By Steve Kim

It seems as though the partnership between trainer Joel Diaz and former welterweight belt-holder Victor Ortiz is already over. After Ortiz's last fight on December 12th in San Antonio (an eighth round stoppage of veteran journeyman, Gilberto Sanchez Leon) Diaz expected Ortiz to report back to his gym in Indio at the beginning of 2016.

"I think the situation with Victor right now I have not heard from him,"said the respected trainer over the weekend to BoxingScene.com.

"He's been training but I see a little bit of training but I see more of him traveling with his friends and just basically traveling here and there. I haven't heard from him."

Diaz has been communicating his Ortiz's assistant coach, Joseph Janik.

"The last thing I heard from coach 'Hoss', he was telling me that Indio was not for him. That there's nothing to do here and his friends are in Ventura. Simple as that," said Diaz, who now basically considers Ortiz his former fighter.

"I believe so," he admitted,"and you know what? Since he hasn't called me and he's been training and since 'Hoss' told me that, it's like I tell every single one of my fighters: every sacrifice in life is worth it. Victor doesn't sacrifice and he wants to be around his friends in a comfort zone. That's what Victor does. He's not 100-percent focused on the job. The only time he would perform when he was here was because I was always on his ass. I was always hard on him.

"A lot of fighters don't like that. They don't like the trainers to be hard on them. Over there he has a bunch of yes-men."

Diaz still has a deep roster of fighters which includes Ruslan Provodnikov, Diego De La Hoya and Jesse Magdaleno, among others."I consider every fighter a priority. Victor is no different from anybody else. Victor leaving camp is like another kid leaving camp, simple as that. He doesn't come to camp, I still move on. I have a lot of fighters that I'm training."

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.