Vergil Ortiz Jr. and WBC interim junior middleweight champion Serhii Bohachuk weighed 153.8 lbs for their twelve-round headliner on Saturday, August 10, at the Michelob Ultra Arena in Las Vegas.
Bohachuk (24-1, 23 KOs) makes his first defense of his interim WBC 154-lb title, which he captured on March 30th, with a twelve-round unanimous decision win over Brian Mendoza.
This is a tough fight to predict because both fighters are straight-ahead sluggers specializing in brawling and don’t think much about their defense when letting their hands go. Bohachuk has power similar to Ortiz but with slower hand speed.
If Vergil loses this fight, it would be a massive career letdown because it’s taken many years to get to this point, and it would be hard for him to come back soon from a loss.
Saturday’s Bohachuk vs. Ortiz Jr. event will be shown live on DAZN at 8 pm ET/5 pm PT. Promoter Oscar De La Hoya says if Ortiz Jr. wins, he wants to match him against the fight winner between IBF 154-lb champion Bakhram Murtazaliev and Tim Tszyu.
He knows that Ortiz Jr.’s chances of getting a shot against WBC and WBO junior middleweight champion Sebastian Fundora are slim because he’s expected to fight Errol Spence next and likely Terence Crawford after that.
Vergil Jr, 26, will be making his third appearance in 2024. This is the busiest he’s been in his career in six years since 2018, and hopefully, he can stay healthy and continue fighting without going on the shelf for an extended stay.
“That loss, he was up against Brandon Adams before he got caught with a big left hand that changed the entire course of that fight,” said Chris Mannix to DAZN Boxing about Serhii Bohachuk’s sole career defeat three years ago in March 2021 against Brandon Adams.
Bohachuk had won virtually every second of every round against Brandon Adams in their clash three years ago when he was caught with a left hook while going for the finish. The punch caught Bohachuk off guard, and he was badly stunned. The fight ended at that point.
“There’s a big part of me that says Bohachuk is going to pull off an upset here, but these two have sparred a lot. So, Vergil Ortiz knows what he’s getting into with Bohachuk,” said Mannix.
“I don’t know how much you put into that, but when a guy takes a dangerous fight against a guy that he’s sparred against in the past, that sometimes tells me that he knows something about his opponent.”
“He knows something, but so does Bohachuk. He’s not going to be surprised by the heavy hands of Vergil Ortiz,” said Sergio Mora. “This is the type of fight where I could see both of them going down and both of them getting seriously hurt. But it doesn’t go the distance.”
The sparring these two fighters have done likely won’t have much bearing on who wins on Saturday night because it’s a different story when it’s under lights without headgear and heavy gloves.
“There’s way too much power. Bohachuk, the thing about him is that when he lost to Brandon Adams, he was an exceptional fighter. I remember him from ‘The Contender.’ He won ‘The Contender’ and came up short against [Jermall] Charlo. Charlo wasn’t able to stop him, and he’d been stopping everybody. So, he can fight, he has power, and he has consistency.
“So, that’s why I have to knock off Bohachuk a little bit to win this fight,” said Mora.
It’s unclear why there wasn’t a rematch between Bohachuk and Adams. That would have been logical for Bohachuk to do because it’s not as if Adams was busy with his career. He’s only fought once since then, beating a no-name fighter.
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