‘Fighting Words’ – How Vergil Ortiz Jr.-Serhii Bohachuk went from unplanned to can’t-miss

They have not yet won major world titles. They are not yet household names. Yet this Saturday’s main event between Vergil Ortiz and Serhii Bohachuk is highly anticipated, a collision that appeals to those who follow boxing closely.

This fight is not only can’t-miss, but don’t-blink.

And it was never the original plan.

This easily could have been a year in which Ortiz and Bohachuk wound up derailed by circumstances beyond their control, by fights being called off, opponents replaced, opportunities evaporated.

Instead, their years have potentially been salvaged — by something potentially savage.

This fight between Ortiz and Bohachuk is reminiscent of another junior middleweight confrontation turned conflagration, a pairing that promised entertainment on paper and then delivered once the bell rang. 

James Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo met in 2011 when Kirkland was 29-1 (26 KOs) and Angulo was 20-1 (17 KOs). Kirkland had suffered a surprising one-round technical knockout to Nobuhiro Ishida earlier that year, while Angulo was nearly two and a half years removed from a decision defeat to Kermit Cintron. 

Their prior losses didn’t diminish the fight. As I wrote back then: “The expectations that fueled more than three years of anticipation were fulfilled within the first three minutes of action.”

Ortiz vs. Bohachuk hadn’t really been on the radar. Now the radar is showing heavy artillery en route to the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. Saturday is going to be explosive.

“Fireworks guaranteed,” said Bohachuk’s promoter, Tom Loeffler, earlier in the week. “Probably the best fight on TV that we’ve seen in a long time. There’s not going to be any slow starts here. We know Vergil comes out very quickly. We know Bohachuk has the experience and heavy-handedness. They want what’s sitting here in front of Bohachuk [the WBC’s interim junior middleweight world title]. You’re going to see a special fight on Saturday night.”

And this is all, in a way, thanks to Keith Thurman.

Thurman was supposed to face Tim Tszyu in a junior middleweight title bout in March, headlining the first Premier Boxing Champions pay-per-view through PBC’s new partnership with Amazon’s Prime Video.

But Thurman got injured in training camp and withdrew less than two weeks before the fight. The decision-makers turned to Sebastian Fundora, who was also scheduled to perform on the show against Bohachuk, with the winner picking up the vacant WBC world title.

Tszyu lost that night and suffered a terrible gash above his hairline due to an accidental clash between his head and Fundora’s elbow. That wound would also play an important role later on in this story.

On the undercard of Tszyu-Fundora, Bohachuk battered Brian Mendoza en route to a unanimous decision win.

Bohachuk didn’t pick up the WBC title, though. Not the full version, at least. Rather, Fundora went home with Tszyu’s WBO title now in his possession, and the WBC belt also part of his collection. Bohachuk instead received the WBC’s interim title, the one now on the line against Ortiz.

That interim title was supposed to guarantee Bohachuk a shot at the Tszyu-Fundora winner. Immediately after the main event, however, Errol Spence entered the ring. It seemed as if Fundora vs. the former unified welterweight titleholder would be next. Or, perhaps, Fundora would meet the man who topped Spence in 2023, undisputed 147-pound champion Terence Crawford.

Loeffler wasn’t overly concerned.

“There are a lot of great matchups at 154 right now,” Loeffler told BoxingScene’s Kieran Mulvaney less than two weeks after Bohachuk beat Mendoza. “So that seems to have become one of the hottest divisions in the sport, and Serhii is perfectly positioned.”

It might seem that Bohachuk was snubbed by the WBC awarding its belt in the main event rather than the originally planned undercard slot. But that wasn’t the case, according to Loeffler.

“The WBC protected him [Bohachuk],” the promoter told me earlier this week. “When they granted the sanction of Fundora to fight Tszyu, they protected Serhii, saying ‘We’ll sanction that fight if Bohachuk can fight for the interim title to protect his position.’ So he went from number two to winning the interim world title, which puts him right there, as close as you can get to the champion without actually being the world champion. We’re thankful for that. He put on a great show up there [at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas] and that earned him this position headlining now.”

Ortiz, meanwhile, had entered the junior middleweight division earlier in 2024. He had a pair of bouts slightly over the 154-pound weight limit, making quick work of Fredrick Lawson in January and Thomas Dulorme in April.

Days before Ortiz vs. Dulorme took place, it was announced that Ortiz would face Tszyu on August 3 underneath Crawford’s fight against junior middleweight titleholder Israil Madrimov.

Ortiz vs. Tszyu was pleasing news. Excitement was expected. And so it certainly felt like the air went out of the balloon when, by the end of May, news broke that the match was off, that Tszyu’s injury from the Fundora fight hadn’t healed enough for him to be cleared for a full training camp.

Talks promptly began between Ortiz’s and Bohachuk’s teams. Before June was over, Ortiz vs. Bohachuk had been announced. Instead of fighting on August 3, Ortiz would perform one week later.

Too often, when fights fall apart, a boxer will either wind up with a lower-tier opponent just to stay busy, or they just won’t get a chance to perform on that date at all. 

That’s not what’s happened here. There have been multiple quality substitutions. We’ve gone from Tszyu-Thurman to Tszyu-Fundora, and now from Ortiz-Tszyu to Ortiz-Bohachuk.

“This wasn’t the original plan, and it came together because you got to give both fighters credit,” Loeffler said. “You got to give Bohachuk a little more credit, because he’s the champion, he has more to lose. Vergil is the fighter trying to win a title and wants to do anything he can to get a title shot. You got to give him credit for fighting a very dangerous opponent. These could arguably be considered two of the top fighters in that division, if not the two top fighters, depending on what happens on Saturday night.”

This was a mutually beneficial decision. Golden Boy Promotions, which promotes Ortiz, needed a viable opponent for him on this new date, someone worthy of the main event slot on DAZN. And Bohachuk was seeking a return date following the victory over Mendoza.

One imagines this was an easy sell for the streaming service’s decision-makers.

Ortiz and Bohachuk have stepped into the ring a combined 46 times as professional fighters. Only once has one of their matches made it to the final bell. Ortiz is 21-0 (21 KOs). Bohachuk is 24-1 (23 KOs). Even that loss came via eighth-round TKO, against Brandon Adams back in 2021. Bohachuk’s only fight to go the distance was the last one, against Mendoza.

Ortiz and Bohachuk also have a little bit of history. They sparred together in 2022, when Ortiz went to work with Manny Robles, who also trains Bohachuk. (Ortiz has since returned to working with Robert Garcia.)

“I think we [Ortiz and Bohachuk] kind of have that, I want to say, chemistry,” Ortiz said earlier this week. “Chemistry is kind of a weird word to say, but you know when two fighters don’t know each other, they got to feel each other out. I don’t think there’s going to be a feeling-out round. We’re just going to pick up right where we left off.”

That’s what fight fans are hoping for. 

There was no feeling-out between Kirkland and Angulo either. As I wrote at the time:

“That one round brought two knockdowns, two shifts in momentum, 200 punches in three minutes. That is how long it took for Angulo and Kirkland to bring a fantasy fight into the realm of reality. That one round made it easy to forgive how long it had taken to get them there.”

It didn’t take long for us to get to Ortiz vs. Bohachuk. And it might not take long for Ortiz vs. Bohachuk to come to an end either.

“Don’t think about going to the kitchen or going to the bathroom,” Robles said earlier this week. “Anything can happen.”