By Mitch Abramson
Victor Ortiz’s hard childhood in Garden City, Kansas, is well documented. His mother abandoned him when he was seven. His father left around six years later. He and a brother grew up in foster care. He used boxing as a vehicle to escape his hard scrabble life and pull himself out of the abyss.
On Wednesday, during a conference call to hype his Sept. 17 bout with Floyd Mayweather Jr. for his WBC welterweight title, Ortiz harkened back to his youth, and admitted that he reconnected with his biological mother “about seven months ago” and that he’s forgiven her for walking out on him as a little kid.
“The lady is doing well,” Ortiz said. “I think I gave her a year or so of life back into her. She seems like a sweetheart. I don’t know her personally, or anything, but from what I saw, I forgave her for everything. She asked me to please forgive her, and to not hold anything against her, and she didn’t really have to tell me that. I kind of decided I would do that before meeting her. And you know what? I’m just happy for her."
"I’m happy that she married and is happy and has her own family going on. I’ve built my own family except my family is pure friends and they’re as real as they come. Each of them. I could tell you their names, first and last. I could probably even tell you their social security numbers.”