LAS VEGAS – It wasn’t Vergil Ortiz Jr. who had any trouble making weight.
It was the final undercard fighter – winless junior featherweight James Mulder of Antioch, California – who experienced every ounce of the soul-crushing anguish that accompanies the hollow feeling of closing a rigorous training camp and still missing weight.
As Ortiz (21-0, 21 KOs) entered the Nevada Athletic Commission area on the third floor of the MGM Grand Conference Center on Friday, he was determined but smiling slightly, and his father, Vergil Sr., and others from his team assured that everything would be fine following two health-related 2023 pre-weigh-in cancellations when, as a welterweight, he was due to fight current world titleholder Eimantas Stanionis.
As Ortiz and his opponent in Saturday’s Mandalay Bay main event, Serhii Bohachuk (24-1, 23 KOs), retreated into separate rooms to await their weigh-in turns, a heated shouting match erupted in the hallway between the father of Fresno, California’s Jordan Fuentes (who will make his pro debut Saturday) and Deion Shaw, the trainer of Mulder (0-2).
Shaw greeted the father, Joey Fuentes, with grim news: Mulder gave a cursory step on an unofficial scale and weighed a staggering nine pounds more than the agreed-upon weight limit.
In addition to the obvious physical disadvantage at play, the Nevada commission doesn’t allow fights to proceed if one opponent weighs in five pounds greater than the other.
Looking for a solution, Shaw asked Joey Fuentes, “Can we talk as men?”
Joey Fuentes replied in a raised voice, “A man is only as good as his word!”
That put a surge through Shaw, who roared, “Don’t talk to me like I’m from Fresno!”
The next minute of thunderous discourse was inaudible, but the ruckus was so intense, Golden Boy Promotions President Eric Gomez came racing out of his office and worked to separate the pair, with the elder Fuentes telling Shaw, “Get your fighter’s ass out there and have him start running now.”
It was a scorching 100 degrees outside.
Aware of both the commotion and the reports of Mulder weighing so much, the Nevada commission turned its attention to the business at hand.
Both Ortiz and Bohachuk made weight at 153.8 pounds for their DAZN-streamed main event for Bohachuk’s World Boxing Council interim junior middleweight title, and while former champion Cecilia Braekhus came in over the junior middleweight title limit for her Saturday bout against Maricela Cornejo, the WBC allows a one-pound overage in women’s title bouts.
Mulder was in an entirely different situation, compromising the pro debut of Fuentes following his signing with Oscar De La Hoya and Golden Boy Promotions, which came complete with a special Thursday news conference introduction by the “Golden Boy” himself.
The elder Fuentes remained steamed, but as Mulder went through his exhausting effort to cut the weight, Shaw approached again, and this time the conversation was cooler.
“I know this fight is big for you guys,” said Shaw, a former minor-league baseball player in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ system. “This fight is big for my guy, too, being 31. … If he doesn’t win here, it’s over.”
Around that time, the parties huddled with the Nevada commission over the rules pertaining to missing weight so dramatically.
The five-pound-difference rule was explained.
And since Fuentes had yet to step on the official scale, a member of his team brainstormed in this desperate, beyond-the-11th-hour conundrum.
What if 18-year-old Jordan walked over to the nutrition area and ate to his heart’s delight, trying to inflate his weight so Mulder would have a better chance of cutting to within that five-pound window?
Fuentes drank a full bottle of Gatorade, a bottle of water and a half-bottle of cranberry juice while enjoying a morning feast of two pancakes, three slices of bacon, a piece of ham, two scrambled eggs and some pan-fried potatoes.
“I’m so full,” Fuentes said.
Fuentes then headed to the official scale and weighed in at 122.4 pounds.
“It’s like we brought him here as a shiny white Ferrari, and now they’ve made us throw a pail of mud all over it,” Joey Fuentes said.
Into the weigh-in room came Mulder, who stepped on the scale and weighed 128 pounds.
“I didn’t make it,” he told BoxingScene, a pained, near-tearful expression on his face.
Because it was his first time on the scale, however, a representative of the Nevada commission – on its 11th fight of a long morning that featured the need for a replacement opponent for junior welterweight Kenneth Sims Jr. (former junior featherweight titleholder Johnathan Romero emerged) – told Mulder he had only 40 minutes remaining to try again.
Mulder quickly retreated back into the heat, donning a long-sleeve plastic top to maximize his sweating, and proceeded to put himself through several shadow-boxing sessions interrupted by sun-baked runs on the concrete.
As the deadline neared, Shaw told Mulder, “Wipe off your whole body, get all the sweat out of your hair.”
The black towel that Ortiz and Braekhus used to cover their bare bodies on the scale had been removed.
Mulder didn’t care. He shed down to nothing as a female friend grabbed a jacket to cover up his bare essentials, then waited to hear the fateful number read aloud. …
“One twenty-seven!”
Mulder had “made weight.”
So hot at each other hours earlier, Joey Fuentes and Shaw embraced.
The last fight to be approved and the first bout on Saturday night’s card – that unforgettable pro debut by the bright prospect Fuentes and the desperate last stand of a humble fighter likely headed to another career Sunday morning – will happen.
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