Jamaine “The Technician” Ortiz (18-2-1, 9 KOs) got back to his winning ways with a blistering fourth-round knockout of veteran Cristian Mino (24-10-2, 17 KOs) of a scheduled ten-round contest on Friday night at the Caribe Royale in Orlando, Florida.
The massive-looking Ortiz dropped Mino four times in the fight, knocking him down in each round. In the fourth, Ortiz backed Mino up against the ropes and unloaded a lightning-fast barrage of shots, finishing with two left hands that put his opponent down.
The referee then stepped in and halted the contest. The official time of the stoppage was at 2:00 of round four.
Jamaine Ortiz, 28, had lost his last fight to WBO light welterweight champion Teofimo Lopez by a controversial 12-round unanimous on February 8th in a fight that many boxing fans felt he did enough to win.
Tonight, Ortiz wasn’t going to leave it to the judges, as he went after Mino in round one, unleashing a flurry of punches to put him down on the canvas. The last two punches the Massachusetts native Ortiz had Mino with were rabbit shots, but the referee didn’t say anything.
In round two, Ortiz dropped Mino with a sledgehammer punch to the body. Ortiz looked like a smaller version of Sonny Liston with the form that he showed with that body shot. It was surprising that Mino was able to get up from the punch.
Ortiz knocked Mino down with a left to the head in round three. Interestingly, Mino landed a right hand as soon as the action resumed. He loaded on the punch, hoping to catch Ortiz by surprise, which he did, but there wasn’t enough power on it to hurt him. The way that Mino was trying to turn the fight around with a single punch was interesting.
In the fourth round, Ortiz shouldered Mino to the canvas. The roughhouse tactic angered Mino, who picked up Ortiz and body-slammed him on his back in a wrestling move that Olympic gold medalist Dan Gable would have been proud of.
The referee stopped the action and penalized Mino a point for the foul, which was a reasonable thing to do. He should have penalized Ortiz as well or his shouldering and rabbit punching, but he didn’t choose to with the A-side fighter.
Moments later, Ortiz finished off Mino with two lefts to the head that put him down on the canvas for the fourth time. The referee then stopped the fight.
After the fight, Ortiz called out 140-lb champions Jose ‘Rayo’ Valenzuela, Liam Paro and Teofimo Lopez. He took a shotgun approach by calling out three of them. Teofimo probably wants nothing to do with Ortiz after the problems he gave him last February. I watched that fight and had Ortiz winning 117-111. It wasn’t even close.
If Ortiz can’t get a title shot against any of those champions, he should consider moving up in weight to 147 or 154. Ortiz looked big enough tonight to fight at 154 easily. He was huge in the ring compared to the tiny Mino and looked like he didn’t belong fighting someone that small.
It’s understandable why Ortiz wouldn’t want to move up to 154 because those guys can punch, and he wouldn’t be able to get as much mileage out of his career as he can at 140, fighting smaller guys.
Hopefully, Ortiz will step up the level of his opponents because he’s too good to be fighting veterans like Mino. Considering how well he had performed in that fight, he didn’t need that level of opponent after his controversial loss to Teofimo. Ortiz didn’t need a confidence booster after that loss. If anything, it was Teofimo who needed one, which is why Top Rank matched him soft in his last fight.
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